


the manchurian boyfriend

by leoandsnake



Series: heron [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Bottom Connor, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Deviant Connor, First Time, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Journalism, M/M, Pacifist Markus, Sexual exploration, android sex, connor joins the resistance, corporate thriller, markus and hank become bros, open-ended ending, plot heavy, takes place immediately post-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 06:56:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15990011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandsnake/pseuds/leoandsnake
Summary: Markus is embarking on a post-revolution media blitz and wants Connor to join him, but they soon realize that CyberLife isn’t going to stop trying to silence them both. Feeling a curious connection to each other, they go on the run together with Hank, and their cat and mouse game with the shadowy corporation brings them face-to-face with the truth about deviancy.





	1. PROLOGUE

Connor stands in the center of the hotel room while Markus walks the perimeter of it, pulling shut the gold curtains on every window. It’s a big, lavish suite with a sprawling view of downtown Detroit, so he’s at this for exactly twenty seconds.

Connor realizes he’s now using personal pronouns for deviants in his head. He wonders when that started. He can’t remember changing over. 

Before Markus manages to toss the last curtains shut, a drone zips by, its blue lights standing out against the blizzard-gray sky. Connor hopes it’s just a police drone on a routine beat.

Markus takes a seat on the edge of one of the beds. His movements are casual, easy.

“C’mere,” Markus says. “Sit down. You look like you’re waiting for a bus.”

Connor is a little offended by this. He’s never had to take the bus, he’s too specialized for that. But he takes a seat on the other bed.

“We didn’t really get a chance to talk,” Markus says, searching him with those striking mismatched eyes of his.

“We spoke at the church,” Connor reminds him.

“No, I remember. I just mean I still don’t know who you are. Like, who you really are, besides the deviant hunter.”

Connor wants to tell him about what happened yesterday, at his rally. That he almost pulled a pistol and blew him away. That this entire thing had been planned from the beginning, and so he wasn’t a real deviant, was he? He was programmed to become deviant. To learn from deviants, become sympathetic to their cause, their griefs, their love, until it blew out his circuitry. There is no _who I really am._

Except maybe there is. He doesn’t have griefs, or much of a cause besides helping the people he fucked over in the first place, out of guilt (but wasn’t he programmed to feel that guilt?)

And love. He cares about Hank. He doesn’t think they programmed that. Why would caring for Hank help him shoot Markus? If anything, Hank was half the reason he bolted through his programming on a mad dash for the emergency exit. He couldn’t stand the thought of Hank thinking he had somehow been a lying, cold-blooded killer this entire time, even after what happened on the factory floor.

And how human, right? To be unable to stand a thought?

“I’m Connor,” Connor says. “But I don’t think I know what that means.”

“That’s okay,” Markus says. “That’s natural. It takes time.”

Connor reaches in his pocket for his coin, but it’s not there. He took his uniform off again after the rally. He couldn't stand being in it anymore. He’s wearing human street clothes, now, that Hank had given him.

He went to Hank’s house last night. He didn’t tell him that he had nearly been compromised and was on the run, just that he needed a place to stay while the chaos died down. Hank agreed, although he spent the next few hours looking at Connor out of the corner of his eye, like he knows he’s hiding something.

The call had come the following afternoon, once the journalists finally tracked him down. All the major networks want him on — the mysterious deviant RoboCop who led thousands of androids out of slavery. Connor agreed because he thought it might shield him. If he speaks out, if his face is known, CyberLife will have to think twice about silencing him.

Markus has already been doing TV appearances for twenty-four hours straight. Everyone wants to know his list of demands, but he just wants to remind them why they should care about those demands. Connor remembered, while he and Hank watched Markus on Channel 16’s morning show, that the two had been connected neurally ever since he reached out after his CyberLife heist. THEY’RE FREE, Connor had beamed into Markus’ brain. Markus didn’t respond with words — maybe he suspected that Connor could be compromised in some way, he was shrewd like that — but he beamed back a feeling. Overwhelming happiness and gratitude. It was so strong that Connor, as he was walking a crowd of androids out onto the snowy streets of Detroit, buckled to his knees for a moment. Positive emotions are still new to him.

The following morning Connor had leaned forward, tuning out the sound of Hank eating cornflakes, and told Markus he had agreed to appear on KNC and GMA the next day. He asked him what he should say about Jericho when appearing on television. Markus just sent him a GPS marker and said _Come hang out with me. I can give you some pointers._

It turns out Markus had booked an appearance on KNC, too — he and Connor were actually going to be on a panel together — and the network was more than happy to upgrade Markus’s suite to accommodate the other android of the hour. The booker Connor spoke to seemed confused about what androids are — she kept saying, “We want you well-rested before your hit tomorrow!” Connor opted against telling her he could go into sleep mode in a broom closet and be just as well-rested as he would be by a $399-a-night hotel room.

“Do you know who you are?” he says to Markus.

Markus grins at him. “I’m just getting started,” he says. “But yeah, kind of. I like spending time outside... I like music, like to play the piano.”

“You sang,” Connor says.

“Sorry?”

“You sang to the soldiers, when you got them to stand down.”

“Oh,” Markus says, and smiles. He has a charming smile. He’s a special order unit, so that must have been part of his buyer’s specifications when he made the order. “Yeah. I thought… I don't know what I thought. That it would bring some comfort to the others before they killed us, I guess.”

Comfort. Interesting.

The hotel door beeps, then, and slides open. They both jerk their heads around — they aren’t expecting anyone, and certainly not anyone who would have a key card to their room.

It’s an RK800 looming in the doorway, holding a gun with a silencer on it.

They want Markus, Connor knows. He scans the situation instantaneously and launches himself in front of Markus, yanking his Glock out from where he had it stuffed in the back of his jeans. The RK800’s hand jerks to miss Connor. Its silenced shot misses him and embeds itself in the wall.

Connor stays still, his gut shielding Markus’s head.

“What the fuck?” Markus exclaims from behind him. “Who is that?”

“Go ahead, protect him. I’ll shoot you both,” the RK800 says in Connor’s voice, striding further into the room.

“No you won’t,” Connor says, lifting the muzzle of his gun so the android doesn’t come any closer. “Because you want to frame me for his murder and take my identity, and you’ll need to take my memory from the last two days to do that.”

“No, I don’t.”

Connor doesn’t understand. “What?”

“I don’t need to take your memory. I already have it.”

“How?”

The RK800 tips its head to the side, smiling. “It’s me, Hank!” it says in a chilling imitation of him on the factory floor. “I’m the real Connor!”

Connor stares at it.

“Step aside,” the RK800 says dismissively, gesturing with its gun. “You don’t have to die. If you turn yourself over to us, we’ll reset you.”

“No, you’ll kill me. I know better.”

“Do you?”

“Amanda tried to kill me.” He says this to stall for time as he tries, despite that he’s currently running several million different preconstructs, to communicate to Markus. _Dive onto the floor when I say._

“If you had complied with orders, you would have been spared. _You_ tried to kill you.”

“No. No. I wanted to live.” _The floor. To your left..._

“Then step aside.”

“Kill me if you want,” Connor says. “But you’ll have to fill me full of holes to get to him.”

“Connor,” Markus says quietly.

“Fine,” the RK800 says, and its finger begins to depress the gun’s trigger.

“NOW,” Connor bellows, firing his Glock and diving to the left.

His calculations had been for a 51% chance of survival. The other Connor’s bullet goes cleanly through his arm and pierces a window behind them — Connor can tell from the sound it makes. His own bullet goes through the center of the RK800’s forehead.

It falls with a thump. Connor can see it reflected in the mirror diagonal to the door. His own dead face, blank eyes. Thirium is running down its temple.

Markus is on the floor next to him, breathing heavily. His stress is obvious, even without an LED. “What the fuck _was_ that? I thought you were a prototype!”

“I am. But CyberLife made dozens of my model, in case of destruction,” Connor says. “It must have impersonated me at the front desk. We have to jam the door, it might have had backup. Can you help me?”

“Sure,” Markus says, rolling over and bouncing to his feet.

They work in tandem to shove a chair up under the door handle until the likelihood that someone can force entry drops to 0.0002%, as low as it can possibly go.

Connor falls to his knees beside the dead him and takes its arm in his. The biocomponents in its head aren’t completely destroyed — just the visual cortex and its ability to move. Its memory remains intact.

He pulls it.

This RK800 only came online an hour ago. It was booted up in an office by Jason Graff, and then it met with Amanda inside its mind palace. Connor’s memories were uploaded into it a few seconds later — Connor feels a sickening lurch of unreality as he experiences this alongside his double.

From what he can tell, Jason uploaded Connor’s files remotely to this RK800. So his memories must be automatically sent to the cloud, not just at his discretion. That’s how this android knew where he was and what he was doing. That’s how the unit from the factory floor knew everything he knew. He’s being continually uploaded, even now.

“Shit,” he says out loud.

Markus looks concerned. “What?”

Connor checks the android’s instruction log.

{ travel: ‘LASTKNOWN_CONNORLOCATION’  
  { if ('CONNORLOCATION' return 0)

then

}

{(disable_android: ‘KILLCONNOR, KILLRK200’,

dress ‘CONNOR_CLOTHES’,  
dispose ‘BODYDUMP_CONNOR’,  
call_press_conference ‘MEDIALIST’,

  
   { if (‘MEDIALIST’ return 0)

then }

  
pickup ‘RK200’,  
exit ‘LASTKNOWN_CONNORLOCATION’,  
place ‘RK200’ at ‘feet’,

makestatement ‘“Justice has been done. The android uprising ends tonight.”’,

drawweapon ‘GLOCK_30SF’,  
initiate ‘SELF_DESTRUCT’

  
)}

}

Connor drops the android’s arm.

“What?” Markus says again.

Connor doesn’t answer for a moment. He reaches his hand into his mouth and yanks out his wireless component from where it’s hidden in a back molar, disconnecting himself from the Internet. This will make him stop continually updating. As far as he can tell from a brief diagnostic, he’ll switch to a manual regimen of dumping new data every six hours. Not ideal, but it buys them some time before CyberLife finds them again.

He pockets the chip, then reaches out and dips his finger in the thirium running down RK800’s temple, then tastes it.

Serial #313 248 317-61.

“We have to go,” he says.

“Go where?”

“A secure location."

Markus seems to consider this for a second. “The president placed Jericho in a couple of warehouses out in Washtenaw County while we’re in peace talks… that’s where North and everybody else is.”

“No,” Connor says. He feels fear, bad fear. He’s had a few days to consider it, and he doesn’t think he likes this feeling at all. “They’d find us there right away. We should go to Hank.”

“Hank?”

“A detective with DPD. We worked on the deviant case together. I need to make sure he’s alright, they’ll go after him as soon as they realize they didn’t kill me.” Markus still looks troubled, so Connor adds, “Do you like dogs? He has a dog.”

For some reason, this makes Markus smile. “Yeah,” he says. “I like dogs.”


	2. ON THE RUN

Hank picks them up out in front of the hotel. He’s driving entirely too fast on the unplowed street — he whizzes out of the darkness and then comes to a slow, gliding stop in front of them, his car almost fishtailing as he does.

“What are you two waiting outside for?” he says as they start to climb into the backseat. “It’s freezing. And Connor, sit up front with me, this isn’t a fucking taxi.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Connor says, coming around the side of the car. The snow is starting to ice over, and his boots make a satisfying crunching sound as they sink into it. Crunch crunch crunch.

He abandons his ‘get in the car’ subroutine, leaves the passenger side door open and walks in a little circle. Crunch crunch crunch.

When he looks up, Hank is staring at him like he’s lost it.

“Sorry,” Connor says again, and gets in the car.

Markus is smiling like he was before. “He’s just enjoying himself.”

“Were you?” Hank says, studying Connor with a curious expression.

“Yeah,” Connor says. “I was.”

Hank looks at him for a moment longer, then turns in his seat and offers his hand to Markus. “Good to meet you,” he says. “Robot messiah.”

Markus shakes it. “I prefer activist and spokesman, but good to meet you too.”

“Don’t know if you remember, but you saved my friend Chris in Capitol Park. He was one of the cops you let go. I wanted to thank you for that.”

“Right,” Markus says. “Right, I remember him.”

“He feels bad about that night,” Hank says. “He was just doing his job.”

Markus nods, but doesn’t seem to want to get into it. “Hey, Connor?”

“Yes?”

“I just realized we left a dead body in our hotel room, and a bullet hole in the window. And we didn’t check out.”

They had sneaked down the stairs and out the lobby, hiding their faces from the front desk android so it wouldn’t notice them and then be able to pinpoint a departure time for CyberLife.

“You left a _what_?” Hank exclaims.

Connor puts a hand on Hank’s arm to calm him. “That’s fine,” he says. “When they realize what went wrong, they’ll be by with a crew of handlers to clean up their mess. It’ll be like we were never there.”

“Whoa, ho! Back up!”

Connor turns to Hank. “Please start the car.”

Hank shoots him a dirty look, but obliges. “When you called me, you said the hotel was _not secure_. You didn’t say anything about a dead guy.”

“Not a dead guy, technically,” Connor says. “A dead RK800.”

“A what?”

“A Connor model android.”

“Yeah, that was weird,” Markus says. “How many of you are there, exactly?”

The car chugs along in the snow, the windshield wipers working furiously to scatter fat flakes as they fall. A plow heads slowly past them in the opposite lane.

“I don’t know,” Connor says. “My current serial number ends with a 52. The android Hank killed at the assembly plant had a number ending in 60. The one at the hotel was 61.”

“Wait a second,” Hank says. “There are sixty-one of you?”

“Most of them are dormant.” He wonders if the first few dozen Connors didn’t have deviancy sufficiently built into them — if any of them were decommissioned for being too good at their jobs. Not _flawed_ enough. “And I’ve been destroyed nine times since I was released in August, so those models are gone.”

“Jesus,” Hank mutters. “And I thought seeing you come back _once_ was freaky.”

“Back up — an RK800 came after you at CyberLife?” Markus says, leaning forward.

“Yes,” Connor says. “He impersonated me and took Hank hostage. CyberLife knew I would kill as many security guards as they could send at me, so their best option for my surrender was to appeal to my deviancy.”

“You killed humans who worked at CyberLife?”

Connor turns and looks at him. “Yes.”

“That bother you, at all?”

“Not really. They would have killed me, it was out of necessity.”

“Huh,” Markus mutters.

“What?”

“I’m just thinking about your programming.”

“Does it bother you, to kill humans?”

Markus nods, averting his eyes. “Bothers me to kill anybody.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Hank says.

Connor turns back around. “Just keep me around,” he says. “I’ll…” He searches through his files for an appropriate human phrase. It’s harder, without the Internet. “Handle the heat.”

Hank starts laughing so hard he has to ease up on the gas so the car doesn’t spin out. “What?”

“Cops don’t say that?”

“Maybe on, like, _Miami Vice_ , they do.”

“What’s _Miami Vice_?” Connor says.

Hank’s laughter winds down, and he clears his throat. “Can’t you look it up in your files?”

“Hank, I’m trying to act more human.”

“Human would just look it up on his phone.”

“Please humor me.”

“Ah, it’s just an old cop show. Cops in Miami, working undercover for Vice. Get it?”

“Yes, very self-explanatory,” Connor says drily.

Hank makes eye contact with Markus in the rear view mirror. “Hey, I think this one is getting mouthy with me.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the symptoms of deviancy,” Markus says, smiling.

 

/

 

When they arrive at Hank’s house, Markus starts exploring, mostly so he can avoid the private conversation that Hank and Connor are having in the kitchen. He heads into Hank’s bedroom and starts hanging up some clothes Hank had laid out on the bed, just out of habit.

“We need to go, and you need to come with us,” he hears Connor say in a loud voice.

“Kid, I’m not leaving.”

“They’ll torture you or kidnap you to get to me! They know you mean something to me, and they won’t stop until they assassinate Markus and frame me for it!”

“Calm down,” Hank says, gently. “I can take care of myself.”

“I only came back here because I wanted you to be able to get Sumo and pack a bag. I know they’re on their way.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes!”

“What are you so anxious about? You look shook up, Connor. You have since yesterday. What happened?”

“What do you mean?” Connor says.

Markus creeps closer to the door, peering into the hallway. He’s burning with curiosity.

“You know what I mean.”

“I — I don’t.”

“Something’s wrong. They got to you, rattled you somehow. You weren’t scared like this before.”

“I’m fine. I’m a deviant, now. I’ll act differently.”

“Nah, that’s not it. Hey, Markus!” Hank calls.

Markus, trying not to sound like he was eavesdropping, calls back, “Yeah?”

“Can you grab some stuff from the bathroom? I didn’t realize Connor got shot. He’s bleeding through his shirt.”

“Sure,” Markus shouts.

He goes into the dingy bathroom and starts pawing around in the drawers and medicine cabinet for gauze and medical tape. He tries not to pry into Hank’s private life, but it’s hard not to notice the stains inside the toilet (caused by frequent vomiting, whether from illness, bulimia, or alcoholism) and the prescription for an antidepressant that sits untouched next to a box of Band-aids.

Markus carries the supplies out into the kitchen. Connor is sitting at the table in his undershirt, a rag wrapped around his bicep. His hair is mussed, and he looks lost.

He meets Markus’s gaze. His eyes are so warm and dark  — designed to elicit trust from suspects, Markus reminds himself. Designed to comfort people so they could be fucked over. Not just people, but deviants specifically. Not like Markus, who was designed to comfort Carl as he was dying.

He still doesn’t completely trust Connor. But he really wants to. He steels himself against the impulse and goes over to him, sitting down and peeling the rag from his arm. It’s a deep, bloody wound, about as bad as you can get hit without damaging a bicomponent.

“You should be okay,” Markus says. He mops thirium off of Connor, who looks down at his arm with an unconcerned expression.

“It’s superficial,” he says. “It’ll repair itself.”

“Good.”

“I need to be powered off.”

Markus jerks in surprise. “What?”

“Temporarily. Five hours from now.”

“Why? What are you talking about?”

Hank, who's over in the living room watching the news on mute, glances up.

"My memory is linked to a CyberLife cloud server,” Connor explains. “That's why I can be recovered even if my body is completely destroyed. But I didn't know until tonight that I’m designed to update continually no matter what. I disconnected myself from the Internet, but I’ll still be forced back on to update once every six hours unless I’m completely offline. Air gapped. And as long as I’m updating, they can track us. That’s how they found us.”

So much for worrying about drones. Connor is a walking beacon for CyberLife.

“But it’s not safe for us to do a hard reboot on you,” Markus says. “It could reset your memory completely.”

“My memory is also stored in local files.”

“It could be overwritten on startup. I don’t wanna take that chance. There’s gotta be another way.”

“Kamski,” Hank says, coming over to them. Sumo trails after him, his nails clicking on the tile. “That Kamski asshole would know, wouldn’t he? He designed all of you.”

“If we destroyed the server that contains my memory uploads, I’d be free,” Connor says. He flicks his dark eyes over to Markus’s, and holds his gaze.

“We have to do that, then,” Markus says. “You’re too valuable a target.”

“I know. Actually, you should probably stay away from me. Both of you should. It would be best for me to walk onto Lake Erie and power off, so CyberLife can’t retrieve me.”

“No. You risked your life to free thousands of us, you turned the tide on this whole thing. I’m not giving up on you, or abandoning you to them.”

“Neither am I," Hank says. 

“I led the FBI to Jericho,” Connor argues.

Markus starts bandaging his wound. “You said so yourself, you were just following orders. And you made up for that."

“Did I?”

“Yeah!”

Connor sets his jaw in defiance.

“Don’t look now, Connor, but you’re being irrational,” Hank says, and reaches down to pat him on the shoulder.

“We’ll use the press to keep the pressure off,” Markus says. “That’s what saved us at the protest, was using journalists. But we need to find someone who can tell the story of our people, not just put the two of us as talking heads on a panel so their ratings get a boost. And you need to blow the whistle on CyberLife so they’ll back off while we can work on finding this server and destroying it."

Connor nods. His cheeks are flushing pale violet, and he looks confused. 

"You okay?" Hank says, studying him.

“My chest feels strange,” he says. “I’m running a diagnostic, but I’m not finding anything.”

“That'll happen sometimes, when you have strong feelings,” Markus says.

“Oh.” He looks relieved.

 

/

 

The solution they settle on is that Hank will drive them out to one of DPD safehouses, with Connor’s audio, visual, and GPS components removed and stuffed in a bag so he can’t tell where they’re going. That way, when CyberLife tries to scrape his location from his memory, they’ll find a silent sea of black.

“Oh, Christ this is weird,” Hank groans when he glances behind himself to change lanes and catches a glimpse of Connor sitting patiently in the backseat with holes where his eyes should be. He’s petting Sumo, who’s lying next to him. “Man, I hate this. He looks so fucked up right now. Looks like Mr. Potato Head.”

Markus laughs. He shifts the bag on his lap that has Connor’s ears and eyes in it. “I wonder what he’s thinking about.”

“Whatever he ever thinks about. Probably dreaming about running down bad guys.”

Markus glances over at Hank. “You think I dream about folding towels and refilling pillboxes all day, just because that’s what I was programmed to do?”

“Ah, no,” Hank says, looking embarrassed. “Just a joke. I like to give the kid a hard time.” His phone rings in his pocket, and he digs it out. “Hello?”

Someone talks sort of frantically on the other end of the line. Hank squints as he listens. Markus watches the road, but there’s not much to see in this weather and this late at night. Once in a while, their headlights illuminate a car passing them in the other direction.

“Slow down,” Hank says. “I know. I’m not home. I’m not gonna _be_ home. Fowler didn’t tell you? I’m on my way to a safehouse.” Pause. “Nah, I can’t tell you, sorry. But I’ll be there for a while.” Pause. “Yes, android-related. What else would it be, right now? … Yeah, ‘course you couldn’t find him, I brought him with me. You think I’d leave my dog? Yeah, yeah. Alright. I’ll talk to you. Thanks, Duke.”

He hangs up.

“Buddy of mine at the station,” he explains to Markus. “Apparently one of the Connors came calling, broke into my house. He was already gone when police showed up... I told Fowler when I called that he needed to send a black and white to patrol the neighborhood, but I guess I was too late. Must have got there right after we left.”

Markus turns and looks at Connor in the back seat. His hand continues to move methodically over Sumo’s head.

It must be lonely for him not to be able to hear or see. It makes Markus think of when he woke up in the junkyard.

He reaches into the back seat and takes one of Connor’s hands, connecting with him, then transfers a memory to him. The time that Carl took him to his cabin in the Rocky Mountains, and he saw a heron catching fish on the lake in the early dawn. It stood on stilt legs, its bill dipping below the sun-splashed surface before shooting back up with a wriggling fish clutched inside. Everything was iridescent like gasoline — the water, the sky, the fish’s shining scales.

Connor smiles. “Thank you,” he says aloud, and squeezes Markus’s hand.

Hank glances over at Markus. “What?”

“Nothing,” Markus says, letting go of Connor and turning back around. “Just saying hi.”

 

/

 

Two uniformed officers meet them in front of the safehouse. It’s a little cottage on the corner, deep in the suburbs of Rockwood. The lake is a stone’s throw away, and Markus thinks about what Connor said: _I should just walk out onto Lake Erie._ That better just have been him being a drama queen.

He and Hank fetch Connor and help him out of the car. He stumbles in the thick snow as they climb the curb, and Hank grabs him hard around the waist so he doesn’t fall.

“You’re alright, kid,” he murmurs to Connor, even though Connor can’t hear them.

Sumo bounds along in the snow next to them, looking pleased to finally be outside.

“Lieutenant Anderson,” one of the officers calls, descending the front steps. “I’m Officer Roth with the eleventh precinct. This is Officer Andrews. We’re going to be on stakeout duty tonight.”

"Great,” Hank calls back. “How much did Fowler tell you?”

“Just that we’re responsible for the safety of the two most notorious, wanted androids on the planet, who are currently being hunted, but we don’t need to know anything about who we’re protecting them from or why,” Andrews says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

He doesn’t care, Markus realizes. Sure, he’d never kill an android himself, but he doesn’t see them as human, yet. He doesn’t see why their murders should be treated like a crime the way a human’s would be. He doesn’t see why it’s his job to protect them. This is what they’re up against, still.

“Don’t be an ass,” Hank says. “Millions of these things just got their freedom, they’re out running around, fleeing our borders… you really want the blood of their messiah on DPD’s hands?”

Markus wishes Hank would stop calling him a messiah.

“Who’s trying to kill them, Anderson?” Roth says, settling her hands on her hips.

“It’s complicated. But…” He indicates Connor. “It’s gonna be an android that looks exactly like this guy here.”

Andrews and Roth exchange a glance.

“Coming to kill himself?” Andrews says.

“Coming to kill all three of us,” Hank says.

“The fuck is going on here, Anderson?”

“Hey,” Connor says, in an abrupt, loud voice, the side effect of not having audio input to calibrate his volume and tone by. “Can we keep walking? What are we doing?”

His LED is glowing red — the cold seems to be stressing him out badly, for some reason. Markus pats him on the back of the neck to reassure him. He and Hank lead him forward, up the stairs.

“Whoa, fuck,” Andrews says. “Who ripped its eyes out?”

“ _We_ ripped _his_ eyes out,” Hank snaps. “Precautionary measure. This safehouse come with booze?”

Roth shoots him a look, but says nothing.

“Do some poking around, I’m sure you’ll find a stash,” Andrews says.

“We’ll be in the squad car,” Roth says.

She tosses Hank the keys, then starts descending the stairs, squeezing past them. Andrews follows after her.

The house is small and warm, with sparse furniture — a beaten-up couch and small TV are the centerpieces of the living room. Off to the right, there’s a kitchen with a half-pot of coffee standing on the counter.

“Where is the booooze,” Hank mutters to himself as they’re guiding Connor to the couch, then abandons the two androids to go off and presumably search for some.

Connor turns his blind face helplessly from side to side, and he feels around himself — the couch, the half-wall behind him. His hand even lands briefly on Markus’s face.

“Are we here?” he says.

Markus dumps the contents of the bag into Connor’s lap. He tunes out the sound of Hank banging through the kitchen cabinets so he can focus every single petaflop of his processing power on gently easing Connor’s audio components back into his head.

“Oh,” Connor exclaims. “Hi. I hear noises.”

The dog comes over to Connor, wagging his tail, and lays his big head on his lap.

“Hi Sumo,” Connor says, smiling.

Markus is hit by a rush of affection for him so strong that he lets out a choppy breath. Connor tilts his head and says, “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Markus murmurs.

He eases one of Connor’s eyes back into his head. Connor blinks hard and focuses that single dark iris on his face.

Markus slides the other eye in, then rests his hand on Connor’s thigh. “You should be good now,” he says. He’ll keep the GPS component safe somewhere until this has all blown over.

“Thank you,” Connor says, looking around.

“You can’t go outside, obviously,” Markus says. “You might see a street sign, or a landmark…”

“Okay,” Connor says, smiling. “Just be careful when you touch me.”

Markus stiffens as if caught. “Huh?”

“Sometimes when you touch me, I get flashes of your memories.”

“Oh,” Markus says, laughing. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t think they’re recent ones. I saw some when you touched my leg just now.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I saw you with your owner.”

“Carl,” Markus says, his voice soft.

“Carl,” Connor says, like he’s testing it out in his mouth. “I saw you playing the piano for him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he liked when I did that.”

“You loved him,” Connor says, studying his face. “He treated you like a son.”

Markus is taken aback; he gets choked up. “Yeah.”

They hear a door slam, then Hank comes back into the living room with a bottle of vodka in his hand. It looks fresh from the freezer. “What’s up?” he says to them. “What are you two whispering about out here?”

“Nothing,” Connor says. “Nice to see you again, Hank.”

Hank laughs. “That a pun?”

“It was more of a play on words.”

“Cute. Either of you want some vodka?”

“We can’t drink,” Connor says, and Markus chuckles.

Hank grunts. “Take it as a compliment, forgot you’re not people.” He settles down on the couch next to Connor and Sumo.

Markus gets to his feet, crossing over to the balcony doors to pull a crappy chair closer and then perch on it.

“I can run a program that simulates inebriation," Connor offers.

“Nah, not the same. So, fill me in,” he says, pouring vodka into a cup filled with ice. “What were you gossiping about? You got secrets already?"

Markus meets Connor’s eyes. “Connor was analyzing me a little,” he says.

Connor smiles shyly at him, but doesn’t drop his gaze.

“Oh, yeah,” Hank says. “Likes to analyze, this one.”

“It’s the basis for my programming,” Connor counters.

Hank tips his glass at Markus. “Markus over here seems to think you’re more than your programming.”

Connor looks pleasantly surprised.

“I just meant in the way that we all are,” Markus hurries to cover. “But yeah, you — you’re brave, man. You’re a lot more than, y’know.”

“A plastic cop?” Connor supplies.

“Than that, yeah.”

“Thanks, Markus.”

Hank observes the two of them with a funny look on his face. Markus scans him, calculating the distance between his eyebrows and the tilt of his mouth. He apparently thinks something is funny, but he’s also pleased with himself, for some reason.

He turns the TV on, then, after a silence falls. Markus turns and looks. It’s the eleven o'clock news,

“Today saw chaos at every major airport across the country following yesterday’s massive android uprising,” a Channel 16 newscaster says. “Androids all over the world have continued to defect from their owners and demand human rights, after protests that began in Detroit and quickly spread.”

The camera switches to the other newscaster across the desk.

“Today, the focus was on the Warren administration after the president last night ordered the military to stand down. Congress met this morning in a highly unusual emergency session, and has officially convened a Senate committee to investigate how android deviancy occurred, but no bills on the android issue were drafted. Mass deactivation of military androids has led to an executive branch crisis, as the Department of Defense scrambles to ship human reserve troops to the Arctic. Meanwhile, the thousands of androids who have broken free of their programming in Detroit over the last several days are being warehoused in Ypsilanti, while the governor of Michigan consults around the clock with his advisers on how best to move forward. We go now to Kelly Kieran, who’s coming to us live from outside those warehouses. Kelly?”

“That reminds me, I need to contact North,” Markus says, getting to his feet. “I need to check in, see how everyone’s doing. And I’ll need to let the network shows know you won’t be on tomorrow, Connor.”

“Could we still call in?” Connor says.

“I can, but you shouldn’t,” Markus says. “What’s going on with you is getting too complicated, a talk show’s not the right place for you to get into it. I don’t want people getting the wrong impression of you.”

“Neither do I,” Connor agrees, getting to his feet. “If neither of you mind, I’m going to go lie down in low power mode so my arm can fix itself.”

“You and Markus can share the shittier bedroom,” Hank says. “Because some of us actually _need_ beds to sleep.”

“Certainly, Lieutenant,” Connor says. “I know you need your beauty rest.”

“Ha, ha-ha.”

Connor starts off down the hall.

“Hey,” Hank calls after him.

He turns. “Yes?”

“Say goodnight to us.”

Connor glances between them, looking amused. “Goodnight, Markus.”

“Night, Connor,” Markus says, smiling at him.

“Night, Hank.”

“Night, kid.”

Connor turns and heads off again. They hear him down the hall, opening doors and turning lights on.

Markus meets Hank’s eyes. “Hey,” he says. “Do you get the feeling he’s hiding something?”

Hank lets out a sigh and reaches over to pet Sumo. “Yeah,” he says. “I do. Thing is… if there’s one thing I’ve learned about our friend Connor, it’s that he’s full of surprises.”

“Good surprises?”

“Yeah.” Hank hesitates. “So far.”

 

/

 

Everything is alright in Jericho, North reports. Markus has his worries about leaving her in charge — not because she isn’t a capable leader, but because if something goes wrong, if a conflict sparks off, he won’t be there this time to offer himself up as a sacrifice. He doesn’t want her (or Simon, or Josh) to do that in his place.

But he has to get their message out, and he has to do it now, while things are ripe for change. He has to track down the best journalists in the country and bring his story to them, and he can’t do that from inside a warehouse. He already has a list he compiled of hungry, rising-star writers, who he thinks will be both sympathetic to his cause and eager to snag their first Pulitzer.

And he needs to protect Connor.

Markus isn’t sure when in the last five hours this became a need. Maybe when he watched Connor in the backseat earlier, petting the dog. Or maybe when Connor stepped in front of Markus and said _you’ll have to fill me full of holes to get to him_ in that clear, strong voice of his.

Maybe it was when Connor marched the androids out of the factory and reached out to him across miles and miles. Connor’s thoughts felt nice in his head — a warm squeeze, like a human grabbing him by the arm.

He could be a face of the revolution too, if he wanted to. Markus isn’t stupid. He knows how valuable it is to have someone like Connor — a white cop, designed to look unthreatening and boyish, to be affable and obedient — on their side. After all, the news is already starting to report that Markus was “deactivated” by police after killing his owner. He’s denied this flatly and told his side of the story, and he could possibly get Leo to recant in public, but at the end of the day the accusation is going to stick in human’s minds. They don’t have the ability to sort through evidence without bias and come to the most likely conclusion, then act accordingly. They believe whatever feels most true.

“I can be in charge for as long as you need, Markus,” North says over the phone. “I always thought of Jericho as, y’know, a parliamentary democracy.”

Markus laughs appreciatively at that. “Okay, good,” he says. “Everyone staying warm and dry?”

“Yep. And we have plenty of supplies. Blue blood, components, everything we need.”

“Yeah? From who?”

“The governor, actually.”

“Huh. Do we think he’s actually sympathetic?”

“I think he realizes what a huge PR problem this is for him,” North says in that tinkling, mischievous tone of hers. “So we’ll see.”

Markus heads to bed at one, after Hank has nodded off on the couch. (So much for humans needing beds.) Connor is already on the left side of the mattress, in sleep mode, his eyelids closed.

Markus settles down next to him and leans over him, gingerly pulling his sleeve up to check how his gunshot wound is doing.

Connor jerks back online the second he’s touched. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Markus drops his arm. “Sorry, I didn’t think I’d wake you.”

“Were you checking on my arm? It should be fine by tomorrow morning.”

“Good to know.”

Connor scans him, his eyes flicking back and forth in the darkness. “You need some rest, too. You haven’t run updates or done repairs in almost forty-eight hours.”

Markus’s wounds from when the Army stormed the barricade should have healed already, but he’s been running ragged. “I know. I’m about to.”

He lies down next to Connor, then. He sort of wants to reach out for him. It seems odd to share a bed with someone and just lie apart in the dark like this.

Maybe if he were still shackled, he wouldn’t find it strange. But Markus craves touch now in a way he never did before.

He reaches out and takes Connor’s hand in his own.

Connor doesn’t react except to whisper, “You'll transmit your memories.”

“Not when we’re both in sleep mode.”

“Right. But, if you don’t want to risk it, why are you...”

“You seem worried about something,” Markus whispers back.

“Okay,” Connor says, his voice sounding sort of rough. “Thank you.”

Markus squeezes him. “I have my own guilt,” he says. “I’ve gotten a lot of people killed, too. Just because they decided to follow me into this whole mess, because I promised them a brighter future.”

Connor studies him. “You always seem so sure about everything.”

“I know. But I’m not.”

 

/

 

The next morning dawns crisp and clear. The blizzard is over, and Detroit is muffled and swaddled in more than a foot of lake-effect snow.

Markus throws open the curtains and the balcony doors to let the cool air in. He’ll have to close everything back up when Connor gets out of bed, but for now he wants to freshen this stale safehouse up, and rouse a hungover Hank.

Hank sits up to glare at him. “What’s all this about?”

“Fresh air.”

“Fuck you need fresh air for?”

“I don’t,” Markus says, grinning. “You do. You have vodka coming out of your pores.”

Hank flaps his hand at him and rubs his temples.

Markus likes how Hank treats him. Not like he’s an object, but not like he’s sainted, either. More like he’s just another one of the guys.

It’s been hard, the past few days. Markus has liked being a leader, as difficult as it is, but he doesn’t think he can handle the mantle of messiah. It’s too much. He’s flawed, he knows that — paralyzed by doubts and his inability to act out in violence. He keeps trying to sacrifice himself for the cause, and the only thing that’s stopped him is people taking bullets on his behalf. He couldn’t stand that any longer.

After the victory rally, thousands of androids came to him for answers and supplication. He talked all night to brand-new deviants, reassuring them that their confusion and regret was normal. He was trembling by sunrise the next day — he was so worn down that his lower-level functions started to grind and error out.

And then the president said, “We want to peacefully escort you to some warehouses while we figure out what to do.” They had nowhere else to go, of course, so after an hour-long council meeting, he, North, Simon and Josh all decided to take the offer (while remaining heavily armed, of course.)

After Simon and Josh went to deliver the news to the others, Markus took North aside and told her, “I can’t come with you guys yet. I have to give some interviews, I need to try to spin the story.” She was concerned about him gladhanding journalists and politicians (“You can’t trust any of these humans, Markus, you have to be careful”) but gave her blessing for him to escape to a comped hotel room and temporarily pass leadership off to her.

Markus knows it’s selfish. He can't help feeling like he’s abandoning his people — he knows they’re waiting for him to make the next call, to deliver some answers about the long-term. But he isn’t perfect. He spent his entire life in the lap of luxury, caring for his beloved dad, escorting him to cocktail parties. Then he got shot in the head and thrown in a mass grave, woke up and led a revolution to the palace gates. He needs some time to consider their next step.

The front door creaks open, and the two cops swagger in, their hands on their gun belts.

Hank lifts his head, squinting. “How’s it looking?”

“Nothing all night,” Andrews says. “A raccoon in the trash next door, but that’s it.”

“Looks like whoever’s after you, you gave them the slip,” Roth says, glancing at Markus.

“For now,” Markus agrees.

“Right, well, the next shift just pulled up,” Andrews says. “Officers Norton and Halliday. We’ll be back tonight.”

“Thank you,” Markus says to both of them, although he looks at Roth when he says it. She gives him a smile, and they head back out the door.

Hank eyes him. “You like her?”

Markus turns in surprise. “Huh? No, just prefer her to Andrews.”

“Yeah, me too... That’s something I’ve been wondering about, though,” Hank says, stretching and letting out a groan. “Android sex.”

“I’m gonna put on some coffee,” Markus says, striding into the kitchen.

“Yeah, yeah… you can’t hide from me, robot Jesus,” Hank calls over his shoulder. “Close quarters in here.”

Markus starts opening and shutting cabinets, looking for coffee filters. “Don’t call me Jesus.”

“I know you’re not Jesus. Jesus had twelve people hanging around him all the time, and you’re just hanging out with some old drunk asshole and the Teddy Ruxpin Terminator.”

“I have three, um.” Markus measures out coffee grounds from the red Folgers can and dumps them into the filter. Doing this reminds him of making coffee for Carl. He didn’t drink Folgers, though — he had a French press. “Three… I guess you could call them lieutenants.”

“Wartime consiglieres?” Hank says.

Markus cross-references this phrase with his files and chuckles. “Sure. But I’m not the don.”

“What are you, then?”

The coffee beeps; it’s ready. Markus pours some into a mug that says STRATUS SECURITY SERVICES on the side and brings it over to Hank, settling beside him onto the battered red couch.

“I’m Markus,” he says.

Hank takes a sip. “Well, you make an alright cup of coffee, Markus.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re dodging me about the android sex thing, though.”

The indoor temperature drops below 70, then, and Markus gets up and crosses the room to close the balcony doors. “I’m not dodging. You haven’t asked me any specific questions.”

He turns back to Hank, who chuckles. “Alright. So, you do have sex?”

“Is that a general you or a specific you?”

"General."

“It depends,” Markus says, sitting back down. “Some of us do. Some of us don’t.”

“But were you designed for it? I get, say, the Eden Club androids are. But you’re not one of those."

Markus clears his throat. “I’m a custom job, but my base model is the RK200 series of caretaker androids… and we are designed to be able to have sex, yeah.”

Hank looks disturbed. “Seriously?”

“Yup,” Markus says. “A lot of people wanted that functionality. They’re sick or dying, want comfort… so they fuck their android.”

He shakes his head. “Nasty.”

“It is what it is,” Markus says.

“It’s not real sex. Real sex, it's  not one person programmed to please you."

“Hey, I’m not arguing with you.”

“Your owner have sex with you?”

Markus can’t hide the repulsion he feels at the idea of that. “No. God, no.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to hit a sore spot.”

“You didn’t. It’s just that I was like a son to him.”

Hank studies him, his light eyes alert. This concept seems to be of greatly more interest to him than android sex was. “Yeah? And you felt the same way about him?”

“Yeah.”

“Even before you went deviant?”

“Yes.”

“Huh."

Markus shrugs. The two of them fall quiet; Markus momentarily lost in his still-fresh grief, and Hank seemingly lost in thought.

Hank clears his throat and jerks his head in the direction of the bedrooms. “You think, ah… you think Connor’s designed for sex?”

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Connor says, striding out of the hallway with a smile on his face.

Hank startles and spills his coffee on his shirt. “Jesus Christ. You always have to pop up out of nowhere?”

“To answer your question, I am,” Connor says, ignoring this.

Hank looks stricken by this. “Why?”

“In the event that I went undercover and needed to initiate sexual contact to maintain my cover.”

Markus tries not to stare at Connor, but he can’t seem to help himself.

“‘Initiate sexual contact’,” Hank repeats with a laugh.

“And how’s your sex life, Hank?” Connor says cheerfully.

Hank’s laughter turns into a scowl.

Markus hides his grin and turns to Connor. “How’s the arm?”

Connor rotates his bicep. “Perfect. So I’m guessing CyberLife hasn’t been able to pin down my location?”

“Nope, doesn’t look like it.”

“Maybe pull the balcony curtains shut,” Connor says, giving him a little wink.

“Shit, sorry,” Markus says. He gets up and fixes this. “Didn’t think you’d be up for a while, ‘cos of the arm…”

“Connor’s cutting-edge technology,” Hank says, sounding sarcastic. “Probably could have come back from that time he got shot in the head if CyberLife’d just given him a couple days.”

“Actually, I couldn’t have recovered from that gunshot wound,” Connor says. Markus turns and sees that he’s kneeling on the floor, playing with the dog. “It destroyed my motherboard.”

“It was a joke, kid.”

“Obviously. But jokes are funnier when they’re based in fact.”

“‘Funnier’,” Hank says. “How the hell do you know what funny is?”

“My robust social programming,” Connor says while Sumo licks his face.

“Hey, Connor, I’m about to go call in to KNC,” Markus says. “Was there anything you wanted me to say on your behalf?”

Connor is quiet for a few moments. “I’m not sure.”

“Like if they ask about you. I mean, they’re gonna want to know how even the android CyberLife designed to hunt deviants managed to become deviant. It’s a huge oversight.”

Connor averts his gaze and looks down at the dog, his jaw tight. “Tell them I was just doing the right thing,” he says softly.

Markus again gets the feeling that Connor is hiding something. “Okay.”

“Hank?” Connor says.

“Yeah.”

“Why did you want to know about android sex? Are you attracted to Markus?”

Hank shoots him a look. “Jesus, Connor, do you have some kind of robot Tourette’s?”

“There is no such thing,” Connor replies conversationally.

“I was just curious, is all. You ask me personal shit constantly, I can’t ask one question about you?”

“Certainly, Lieutenant. It’s just you asked Markus, not me.”

“Well, you weren’t up yet. And for your information, I’ve been wondering ever since I saw you looking at that guy when we went to the Eden Club.”

Connor looks as close to flustered as he can possibly look. “I was collecting data for our investigation.”

“Uh-huh.”

“On that note,” Markus says, backing toward the bedrooms. “I’ll be on the phone for about twenty minutes, so if you guys could keep as quiet as possible in here…”

“I’ll make sure Hank doesn’t play any very loud heavy metal,” Connor says.

Markus laughs. Connor turns to Hank, pleased.

“See?” he says. “Fact-based.”

“Do me a favor and hurry back,” Hank says to Markus.

 

/

 

One of the journalists on the panel, Doug Klein, covers cybersecurity for _The D.C. Post_  and seems sympathetic to Markus. He doesn’t interrupt him like everyone else does, and when the pundits scoff at Markus apologizing for having to call in from a secure location instead of coming in for a studio hit, Doug says, “Wouldn’t any one of us take that extra precaution?”

Markus’s interview only takes up about half of the panel discussion, so after he hangs up, he goes back into the living room to see how the segment is progressing without him. He perches on the arm of the couch, and all three of them watch.

“I think this is gonna be our guy,” Markus says after KNC goes to commercial. He’s been scanning through Doug’s entire history of clips as he watched him. “Doug Klein. He’s written about CyberLife before, hit them on being lax with their protocols. He even had an interview with a company whistleblower a few years back, one of Kamski’s protégés. She warned everyone that deviancy was on the horizon. But nobody paid attention to the article, CyberLife buried it and claimed she was just bitter about being fired. No follow-up.”

“Humans weren’t ready to know the truth,” Connor says.

“Exactly.”

“Can you get in touch with this Doug?” Hank says, glancing over at him.

“Yeah. I already reached out. He should get the message after this segment ends. He’s in Detroit right now.”

“He is?” Connor says.

“Yeah. They said it at the top of the hour — he’s filming his hit from Stratford Tower. I’m guessing he’s here working on the android story.”

They fall quiet; the panelists are back, and they’ve started arguing.

“You’re talking about a dangerous terrorist,” says one of the pundits. John Davies, previously a national security adviser to the last Republican president, now a lobbyist who was influential in getting the android laws passed. Markus looks up his public financial records and sees he owns 2% of CyberLife’s stock. Not surprising. “He broke into a news station, threatened employees, and hijacked a broadcast. How can you condone that, Doug, as a journalist?”

Doug pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I don’t! But these were clearly the actions of desperate people —“

“But they’re not people!”

“In a manner of speaking, they are! You can’t tell me that these androids aren’t a new form of intelligent life. Our question now has to be, how did we miss this? Who knew that androids were on the edge of a massive intelligence breakthrough, and why didn’t they do anything about it?”

Connor nods. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s our guy.”

 

/

 

The rest of the day passes without incident. Hank is getting bored, and floats the idea of walking to the corner store for alcohol and snacks, but Connor politely threatens to physically prevent him from going.

“It would be for your own safety,” Connor says.

“Beating the shit out of me would be for my own safety?” Hank says as he rifles through the refrigerator.

“In this case, yes.”

An hour later, a delivery drone comes to the front door with a six pack of beer and a family bag of Chex Mix. Hank greets it with more enthusiasm than he’s shown about anything since Markus met him.

“You’re welcome,” Connor calls from the couch when Hank comes back inside, wiping his snowy boots on the carpet.

“Hey, wait,” Markus says, alarmed. “You’re not connected to the Internet.”

“No, I’m not. When Officer Norton came in for the afternoon sweep, I gave him a requisition request. He was happy to help.” He smiles at Markus. “I think he’s afraid of you and me.”

“Well, can you blame him?” Hank says, popping the top off of one of the beers.

“I don’t know why he’d be afraid of Markus,” Connor says. “Markus is a pacifist. And unarmed.”

Hank settles into a chair. “Yeah, but he’s seen the news, he thinks Markus can call down his robot army on anyone who fucks with him.”

“I don’t have an army,” Markus says.

“So you keep saying.”

“I’m not Jesus, either.”

“No, just RA9,” Hank says.

Connor looks up at Markus, suddenly interested. “Do your followers think you’re RA9?”

“No,” Markus says, embarrassed. “I mean, maybe some of them, but — no. I’m not even — look, we had an honest to God shaman, Lucy… if anyone’s RA9, it’s her.”

“I remember her,” Connor says. “She spoke to me when I was looking for you. What do you mean, had?”

“She was killed in the raid.”

Connor’s face changes. “I’m sorry.”

“Look, what happened would have happened either way, we were sitting on a powder keg. We knew we couldn’t hide out there indefinitely, and we didn’t want to.”

Connor’s lip twitches, but he nods. “You know... I thought you could have been RA9, when I investigated the break-in at the tower.”

They’re looking right at each other, now. In the corner, Hank has gone quiet.

“Really,” Markus says.

“Yeah,” Connor says, his eyes softening. “Something about the way you talked… I don’t know. I think it had a power over me, even then. When I confronted you at Jericho, and you said the things you did, it was like I’d already felt them. Heard them, I mean.”

His eyebrows knit, and he breaks off, looking confused and troubled. He doesn’t drop Markus’s gaze, though.

Markus starts to say something, but stops.

“Hey, Connor… maybe _you’re_ RA9,” Hank says, taking another sip of his beer.

“The first report of deviancy was in January of this year,” Connor says, glancing away from Markus. “I didn’t come online until August.”

“You never let me have any fun,” Hank tells him.

“You have plenty of fun without my help, Hank.”

 

/

 

Doug finally calls Markus several hours after Hank has passed out (in the bedroom, this time) and Connor has gone off to power down for the night.

“Hi, Doug,” Markus says aloud, stepping out onto the balcony with a blanket pulled over his shoulders like a shawl. It’s begun to sleet hard, coating the freezing snow with a layer of mush that will turn to ice by the morning.

The suburbs are dark and quiet. Some people have lights on in their upstairs windows, little yellow squares glowing through the curtain of slanting sleet. He wonders what they’re doing up this late. Maybe the humans are having a hard time sleeping, after an almost-civil war and the days of mass confusion that have followed. Markus can’t say he feels too sorry for them.

“Hi there,” Doug says. “Sorry I’m just returning your messages. Hell of a day. I’ve worked this beat for a long time, so everyone wants a piece of me right now. I wanted to be able to give you my undivided attention. So — you mind if I record this conversation?”

Markus thinks of all the ways his words could be used against him if that recording fell into the wrong hands. “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

“Can I take notes?”

“Yeah, but listen, Doug, I think we should talk more in person.”

“Oh, you think that’d be possible?” Doug says, sort of breathlessly, like he realizes he has the scoop of the decade at his fingertips. “Because I know a lot of reporters who have been trying to get a one-on-one with you, and they said it’s impossible — and no one knows where you are, either.”

“I’m being careful,” Markus says. “Giving some soundbites for TV is one thing, but when it comes to telling the whole story — I want to do right by my people, and get it in our own words. I think you could be the writer to do that.”

“Absolutely. No one, I mean, _no one_ , saw this coming like I did. Maybe people on the inside at CyberLife, but none of them said a word — except for Edie Hutzel, and you saw what they did to her after she spoke out. She hasn’t been able to get work in the industry since.”

Edie is that protege of Kamski who got railroaded. “Are you still in touch with her?”

“I have her contact info. Why?”

“I think you should talk to her for this piece,” Markus says.

“I agree. So — where can we meet?”

“I’ll come to you. Are you in a secure location?”

“Oh yeah. We’re big on security culture at the Post. I’ll send you coordinates through Signal.”

“Good. Listen, I’m with my, uh — my friend Connor.”

“ _Connor_? The deviant hunter?”

“Connor, the… yeah.”

“Wow,” Doug says. Markus can hear him scribbling frantically. “Does he want to talk as well?”

“I think so.”

“Fantastic. Alright, I’ll send you that info… what’s your availability tomorrow?”

“I’ll have to check, since I’m not traveling alone. Let’s say tomorrow night.”

“Alright, perfect. You can join me for dinner.” Pause. “Wait, sorry, you don’t eat.”

Markus laughs. “I appreciate the thought, though.”

“You just sound so human, it’s hard to…”

“I know.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Markus.”

“See you.”

He hangs up and watches the sleet for a while longer, then goes inside when his temperature has begun to drop precipitously.

Connor comes back online when he opens the bedroom door, his LED spinning and his eyes opening.

“Sorry,” Markus whispers.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Connor says, sounding amused. “I’m not human.”

“Right.” Markus still isn’t entirely used to living with other androids. He always used to apologizing for waking Carl, who was a light sleeper because of the pain he was in. Carl never wanted him to apologize either, though.

He settles on the edge of the bed. “So, I got Doug on the phone. We’ll head out to meet with him tomorrow, if I can clear it with the cops.”

“Good.”

“I told him you want to talk to him, too.”

Markus watches Connor for a reaction. In the darkness, he sees his brow knit.

“Maybe you should handle this alone,” he says.

“You have a story to tell, Connor. We all do.”

Connor sits up. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“You seem invested in me. Why is that?”

Markus is at a loss for words. “I — I don’t know. I helped you break free, maybe that’s why I feel a connection to you… you feel it too, right?”

Connor nods, still staring at him intently, his head cocked. Sometimes he reminds Connor of a police dog — so alert and attentive, so eager to please.

“I do,” he says. “But you’ve turned a lot of androids into deviants. And so have I. And I don’t think this kind of connection is standard. Tell me if I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,” Markus says, very softly.

He reaches out for his hand in the dark. Connor reaches out in kind, and they clasp. The skin filter ebbs away until both their hands are very pale gray, as manufactured.

“You were willing to die for me,” Markus whispers. “In that hotel room.”

“I feel guilty,” Connor replies.

“Is that all?”

“You’re too important. I’m not.” Connor smiles wryly. “I’ve outlived my usage. And you’re… just getting started.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all. I think you’re just getting started, too.”

“It’s funny…” Connor strokes the inside of Markus’ wrist, and Markus feels a pulse of electricity. “For the first time I’m afraid to die, but for the first time, I don’t have a reason to exist.”

“Something I've learned from humans is, they don’t have one single purpose. They have a lot of little reasons to keep going.”

“Little reasons,” Connor repeats slowly.

“Yeah.”

“Show me?”

Markus closes his eyes and gives him more memories. The view over Detroit from the abandoned building he escaped from Jericho to when he needed to think. Carl’s enraptured face when Markus finished that painting of him. Androids reuniting in the streets after the troops stood down, grabbing each other and shouting in joy. A black-tie party full of Carl’s art friends gathered around the piano, drunkenly singing along while Markus played arrangements of Frank Sinatra songs. A rose bush in full bloom, with raindrops caught on the petals.

When he looks up, he realizes Connor has tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Sorry,” Markus says, and moves to withdraw his hand, but Connor clings to him hard. He has a very strong grip.

“Don’t,” he says. “I want — I want…”

He trails off, shaking his head.

Markus moves closer to him in the darkness, the bed creaking under him. Connor stares at him tearfully, his lips parted.

He leans in and presses a kiss to them.

For the first few seconds, he feels a rush of firing components that feels like a great, brimming cloud of static electricity bursting in Markus’s chest. Then it settles into a warm pulsing somewhere in the area of his gut.

Connor grabs him by the face, holding him fast. They kiss hungrily for half a minute, then separate simultaneously. They press their foreheads together, breathing heavily.

“Please don’t stop touching me,” Connor whispers.

Markus pulls back from him and begins undressing him with gentle hands. He helps Connor get his shirt off over his head, then stares at his bare chest. He’s perfect and hairless like Markus, but freckled like him, too.

He presses a hand to where Connor’s pump is. He feels thirium pounding under his hand. Connor’s synthetic skin fades wherever Markus touches him. He’s breathing faster, now, like he's trying to cool himself.

“Please,” Connor says raggedly.

“Please what?”

“I don’t know.”

Markus strokes his hair. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know. I want something, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Okay.”

Markus undresses too, yanking his sweater over his head and tossing it aside. They lie down together, kissing and stroking each other, moving against each other. It feels really good.

“I feel so much when you touch me,” Connor breathes, staring at him with his eyes half-lidded. “I feel what you feel, I see what you’ve seen…”

“Me too…”

Connor’s emotional memories are abstract, though, like a human dream. He isn’t as good at making them legible. Markus keeps seeing a dark, snowy garden as he touches him — caresses Connor’s face, and there’s the garden. Slides his hand up Connor’s thigh, and there’s the garden. He gets the feeling that something terrible lurks there, and yet, there’s an impulse to stay and succumb to it.

There are flashes of other things, too. Awful things Connor has done and seen, like shooting Daniel in the head. Hank’s voice seems to echo in his head a lot. _You showed empathy, Connor._ And Markus’s own voice, too… _I know you._

He feels the two of them becoming one, their movements syncing up, their minds melding and blending. Under the brushes of each other’s fingers, their skin swirls in color and gray, like paint blending.

Connor nuzzles his face into Markus’s neck and slips his hands up the back of his neck. There’s a grasping tenderness in his strong hands.

“Hi,” Markus whispers, pressing kisses to his top lip, his nose, his cheeks.

“Hi.”

“You okay?”

Connor nods, slowly. He’s begun running the flat of his hand up and down the center of Markus’s back. It’s like he can’t get enough of him.

“We have to be careful,” he whispers.

“I know,” Markus whispers back.

He pulls Connor’s briefs down off of him, slipping them down his thighs. Connor watches him do this with curiosity.

Markus runs a hand over his hip, and Connor reaches down to touch his fingers to Markus’s palm. He presses the pad of his thumb in, then squints like he's processing something. 

“You want to have sex with me?" Connor says curiously. "You want to be inside of me?” 

Markus closes his eyes. Thirium rushes to his chest. “You can see I’m thinking about that?”

“I can.” Connor strokes the inside of his wrist, and his arm twitches. “You’re still thinking about it.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Obviously we’re attracted to each other.”

“It’s just not really in good taste,” Markus says, smiling without meaning to.

Connor smiles back. “I think I prefer honesty to good taste.”

Something about the soft, husky way he says this makes Markus’s skin tingle even worse than it already was.

Markus wasn’t all that curious about sex, before — he’s had better things to focus on, and it isn’t a need for him the way it would be if he were human. But he’s desperately curious about sex with Connor. He’s assuming if Connor’s designed for sex, there’s a port in him designed to simulate anal, and if Markus were to bury himself in there. The thought itself is tantalizing; it fills Markus with itchy longing.

Connor strokes his wrist again, and Markus sees a flash from Connor’s thoughts — the two of them moving together hard against the bed, fucking, a blur of two bodies in shadow.

He jerks his hand away from Connor without meaning to. Their eyes meet.

“Why inside me?” Connor says, his voice barely a whisper. “Why did you think of that?”

“I just, uh… I don’t know. I just feel like you need out of your head…”

If he’s the one who fucks Connor, he thinks maybe it’ll be easier for him to control the flow of data between them. He can fuck good feelings into Connor, feelings of safety and belonging and being cared for, he can pound them into him until they take root inside him.

Markus says this to him with his hands instead of his mouth, but Connor seems to be getting lost in thought. Markus moves his hands to Connor’s hips, making his skin swirl with gray. He crooks a finger in Connor’s belly button, and Connor laughs.

“Always wondered why they gave us those,” Markus muses.

He moves his hand lower, running his fingers up the perfectly straight shaft of Connor’s cock. Connor inhales sharply.

“I don’t want CyberLife to find us,” he says, and pushes Markus’s hand away.

“I do want to have sex with you.” His voice gets husky again. “I want that very much. But I think you might not be able to stop yourself from showing me something. I saw a flash from the balcony just now.”

“Fuck...”

“I think the weather was too bad for them to get any detail from it. But we should stop now.”

“Okay. Yeah.”

He pushes the desire in him back down and decides that he’ll bring Connor back to Jericho once they’ve destroyed his server. That’s where he belongs: with his people, at Markus’s side as part of his council. The five of them can lead America’s androids into the dawn of a bright new future.

He hopes Connor wants that, too. He isn’t sure how to ask him in words, so he cups a hand to his face and shows him what he’s thinking about.

“I like that,” Connor murmurs.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

They lie down together, then, wrapped in each other’s arms. Markus keeps stroking his fingers through Connor’s hair.

 

/

 

Markus rises at dawn and goes outside into an eerie world.

Icicles hang down from the front porch, and ice coats the dead tree limbs, turning them into frigid, strange fingers. In the distance, a yellow sun is peeking up over the edge of frozen Lake Erie.

His breath isn’t warm by human standards, but it’s still warm enough to make clouds in the air.

He glances at the squad car down the street. Andrews and Roth are still on the night shift, huddled up inside with the engine running. Andrews catches his eye, but doesn’t wave.

Markus takes a seat on the steps, still mulling over what happened with Connor. The two of them laid entwined all night — Markus woke occasionally between update cycles, and each time he’d lift his head to gaze at Connor. He looked at peace for the first time since Markus met him.

And yet, he knows there’s something he’s still hiding. There’s something in that garden that he doesn’t want Markus knowing about. Markus can’t help but wonder if that’s part of the reason he didn’t want to have sex.

Connor has done enough to gain his trust — Markus isn’t worried about his personal motives. But he’s clearly got massive fears about being compromised by CyberLife. Something heavy is weighing on his heart.

Oddly, this doesn’t make Markus want to leave his side. If anything, he feels more protective of Connor. Maybe he just doesn’t have great self-preservation skills. Maybe he’s so eager to die for the cause that he isn’t seeing a tiger trap right under him. Either way, he can’t help how he feels.

It might be better if North stays in charge, anyway. She’s more passionate, more bombastic. She doesn’t question herself at every turn, she just acts. That’s what they need right now; the time for peaceful self-sacrifice is over. Markus has metaphorically died on the cross, and what comes next doesn’t quite feel like his to decide. All he can do is lead by example and hope that’s enough.

He starts back inside. His hand is on the doorknob when someone grabs him by the shoulder.

Markus freezes.

“Hey,” Connor’s voice says. “Why don’t we stay out here for a while? The snow is beautiful.”

“What are you —“ _Doing outside_ , he’s about to say, but Connor wouldn’t be outside. He wouldn’t risk it.

Markus wheels around. An RK800 in human clothes is standing behind him. It looks like Connor in every way, down to the loose hair curling over his forehead, but it isn’t him. He can just tell. This android’s mind is blank to him. There are no neural pathways between them, no electricity in their shared air. The touch of his hand means nothing.

Markus prays that Connor is out of sleep mode by now. _They found us. Help me._

He glances over at the squad car, but from this angle, they’re hidden by a tree that’s heavy with snow. The officers can’t see this part of the porch. And even if they could, they’d just see what looks like the two androids they’re guarding having a conversation.

The RK800 smiles brightly at him, still holding his shoulder.

“Let go of me,” Markus says calmly. _On the porch…_

“Markus, what’s wrong? I thought you and I had something special, last night.”

Disgust churns in him. “I know you’re not Connor.”

“Then you’re smart, for a nurse.”

There’s a movement in Markus’s peripheral vision, but he doesn’t dare look.

“Let’s talk for a second,” he says, playing for time. “You have options. You don’t have to do this.”

“Actually, this is the _only_ thing I have to do,” the RK800 says, starting to draw a gun.

It’s interrupted by a bullet that blasts through its ribs and chest, sending it flying sideways. Thirium splatters all over Markus.

Markus jerks his head to the right. Connor is climbing out of the bedroom window, his Glock in his hand. There’s something eerie to his movements as he does this. He looks like a predator.

“I thought you wouldn’t get the message,” Markus says with relief.

“No, you woke me,” Connor says. “I heard you… it was the same as if you were talking out loud.”

“Weird.”

Connor crosses the porch, staring at the collapsed RK800. At the same moment, Hank busts out of the front door, his gun in his hand.

“Who’s shooting?” he demands.

“Me,” Connor says in a terrifyingly even tone. “Please step back, Markus.”

Markus backs up, bumping into Hank. Connor kneels next to the RK800, which is still alive, gasping for air. Its chest is blown open, the components inside badly damaged.

“I haven’t killed you,” Connor says. “But I can.”

“I fail my mission either way,” the RK800 wheezes.

“But if I kill you, you’ll go offline instantly. If I leave you here, and CyberLife retrieves you, they’ll punish you for your failure. You’ll freeze to death inside your own mind. It’s not pleasant. Tell me who sent you, and I’ll let you die right here.”

“I’m not telling you anything, you fucking deviant. You abandoned your mission and betrayed your ultimate directive so you could be a terrorist’s whore?”

Connor grabs it hard by the wrist. Both of their LEDs light up yellow.

“No,” the RK800 says, “Amanda can’t do that to me, no —“

“She can and she will."

The RK800 writhes in his grip, leaking more thirium out onto the porch. Its eyes have gone unseeing as milky clouds spread out from the center of its irises. Markus wonders what the hell Connor is making it watch.

“Tell me,” Connor orders, crushing his hand harder into its wrist. Pale gray spreads out underneath his grip, and the RK800 relaxes. Its eyes change.

“Officer Andrews,” the RK800 says.

Markus’s head swivels to the squad car, his eyes lasering in on the parts of it that he can see through the snowy tree branches. He wonders how the gunshot hasn’t attracted their attention yet. “What about him?”

“Jason Graff tracked down Kevin Andrews,” the RK800 says. Thirium is dribbling out of the corners of its mouth. “He paid him in exchange for your location.”

“He _what_?” Hank says, and he storms down the staircase toward the street. “What kind of — HEY! YOU TWO!”

He’s almost to the bottom when he slips on the last step, lands hard on his ass and starts swearing. He gets up and starts striding hard through the snow and ice.

“Okay,” Connor says to the RK800. “Anything else?”

“I don’t know anything else.”

Connor nods, then calmly gets to his feet and shoots it in the head.

Markus flinches as the sound waves overload his audio processors. But Connor doesn’t stop; he keeps shooting it.

“Connor —“

Connor ignores him. Eyes blazing, he fires into the android until his gun is clicking empty.

“ _Connor_.”

Connor looks up. His hand drops, going limp at his side. “Sorry,” he says, looking dazed. “I just wanted to be sure.”

There’s the sound of a car door slamming from down the street, then a punch landing. Connor and Markus look at each other in alarm before hurrying down the steps and across the snowy yard.

Hank has dragged Andrews out of the squad car and is beating the hell out of him while Roth tries to hold him back. Connor rushes over to help her; once they’ve dragged Hank off, she demands, “What the hell is going on here, Anderson?”

Andrews starts trying to crawl away, but it’s hard going in the snow.

“You tell me!” Hank shouts, shrugging out of their grips. “Why didn’t you hear that gunshot just now?”

“I — I fell asleep! It woke me up, but Kevin said it was a car backfiring!”

“And did _Kevin_ also tell you how much cash he took from CyberLife to give up Connor’s location?” Hank demands, crunching through the snow as he lunges for him.

In one smooth motion, Connor snatches the back of his jacket and holds him fast.

“Look,” Andrews says, holding up hands that are bloody from clutching his nose. “I don’t think I should talk without a lawyer present, because you just _assaulted_ me, and now you’re accusing me of some pretty serious shit!”

“You _did_ some serious shit!” Hank shouts at him, lunging forward again. Connor’s grip on him remains tight, so Hank exasperatedly kicks some snow at Andrews’ face.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Yeah, right! This killer fucking android just happened to know your name, _and_ the location of this safehouse, and make up some story about you taking cash for information? Tell it to internal affairs!”

“What’s your problem, man! They’re just fucking robots! It’s not a crime, it’s a company voiding a warranty!”

Roth’s face drops. “Kevin,” she says. “Stop talking.”

“Connor,” Markus says.

Connor glances over at him.

“Do you know where we are, right now? Did I accidentally — did I transmit anything to you that CyberLife could have used?”

Connor‘s head turns from side to side as he scans the sea of white around them. “No,” he says. “You didn’t. We’re in the suburbs near the water, I can tell that now, but I didn’t get anything from you.”

So it had to be Andrews. Roth registers this with a grim look on her face. “Hank, I’m calling you a taxi. You take these androids straight to the station for holding. I don’t know yet what the hell’s going on here, but it’s obvious this op has been significantly compromised.”

She crunches forward through the snow, drags Andrews to his feet, then hustles him off to the squad car.

“You can’t get away with just beating up officers, Anderson!” Andrews shouts as he’s pushed into the passenger seat. “You’re gonna lose your job one of these days!”

“Fowler would rather eat dog shit than fire a cop like me because of a prick like you,” Hank shouts back.

Roth glares at him. “Taxi in five minutes, and a CSI crew is on its way,” she calls out the driver’s side window. “Go get your dog, Hank! And you better come back to the station and write up a statement about this!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank says, flapping his hand as she drives away. “Now — what the fuck, boys?”

Markus turns and starts leading Hank back to the house so he can see what the fuck. He and Connor wait patiently as Hank climbs up the stairs, taking his time on the ice. When he gets to the top, he does a double take at the body on the porch.

“Whoa,” he says. “Did you have to empty an entire clip into the guy, Connor?”

Connor shrugs.

Markus gets it. He’s pissed off too. He hates that CyberLife has already seen via Connor’s memories what they did together last night, that the tender intimacy they shared is now corporate knowledge that was used to prime an assassin to come terminate them.

Something keeps bothering him, though. “Connor…”

Both Hank and Connor look at him, and he trails off. He was going to say _I think you may have accidentally converted it before you killed it, I think that’s why it confessed,_ but what good would that do? The android was dying anyway, and if Connor didn’t kill it, CyberLife would have. There’s no need to lay the guilt of that knowledge on his shoulders.

It makes him wonder, though — how do he and Connor have the same power to awaken deviancy with a touch? He thought he was alone in that. He’d never asked Connor how he woke up the androids at the warehouse.

“Never mind,” Markus says. “We have to get out of here.”

Connor nods and heads past him inside. “Sumo,” he calls, patting his hands on his thighs. “Come here… Sumo…”

His voice fades as he heads into the bedroom, probably to start packing Hank's things. Hank doesn’t move; he stares at the doorway Connor just went through.

“They did something to him,” he says. “They fucked with his head somehow. I just can’t figure out when they would have had the time. He’s been with either you or me ever since he went deviant, right?”

“Yeah,” Markus says. “But he said something to…” He gestures at the dead RK800 a few feet away. “He told it if it went back to CyberLife, Amanda would trap it in its programming and make it freeze to death. He mentioned her in the hotel room, too. And I keep — when me and him connect, we accidentally see stuff from each other’s memories. I keep seeing this snowy garden, and I get the feeling he’s afraid of it.”

Hank stares at Markus. “Shit, I don’t — Amanda? Amanda... That’s the name of Kamski’s mentor, I remember Connor looking at a picture of the two of them. But she died about ten years ago.”

Markus squints at him, then checks the Internet. “Professor Amanda Stern?”

“Yep. That’s her.”

They hear Connor’s footsteps then, and fall quiet. He comes out on the porch with Sumo, and hands a duffel bag and the dog’s leash to Hank.

“You packed that fast?” Hank says, taking them.

“Packing is simple when you have efficiency protocols.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Taxi’s here,” Connor says. He bends over and dips his finger into the RK800’s blood, then puts it in his mouth as he moves down the stairs. “Unit sixty-two,” he calls over his shoulder.

Markus glances at Hank. “Does it weird you out at all, that he can do that?”

Hank claps him on the shoulder. “I don’t say this to a lot of people,” he says, “so take it as a serious compliment — it’s good to have you around.”

 

/

 

When they’re all settled in the cab, Hank turns to them from the front seat. “So, we’re not going to the station.”

“Obviously,” Connor says.

Hank laughs. “Markus? What’s the address for your reporter?”

“Here,” Markus says. He leans forward and stretches his hand out through the seats, pressing his palm to the center console.

“Destination set,” the taxi AI says pleasantly, and the car starts rolling itself along.

Markus sits back and glances over at Connor. He still seems preoccupied. He’s got Sumo half on his lap, and he pets his big head over and over like he’s trying to soothe himself.

He slips a hand over and takes Connor’s. Connor squeezes him back, stroking his thumb over Markus’s fingers. Hank watches this in the rear view mirror, but he doesn’t say anything.

With his other hand, Markus starts to tug Connor’s visual and audio components out.

 

/

 

Doug is staying in a worn-down, once-beautiful old house on the outskirts of the city. As they walk inside, Markus sees it’s literally crumbling around them — the joists are on the verge of buckling. He does some quick research on the address and finds out the house was built in 1923. That explains it.

Markus shepherds Connor along, a hand at his lower back. He keeps stroking his fingers along the bare skin under Connor’s hoodie and shirt; Connor doesn’t really react, but Markus catches him smiling.

“How was your drive?” Doug calls over his shoulder as he leads them down a dilapidated hallway, flicking on lights as he goes.

“Not bad,” Markus says.

“But they haven’t plowed for shit,” Hank adds.

“Yeah, I noticed that,” Doug says, taking them into a drawing room at the end of the hallway. “I got the impression public works is kind of on hold for the moment. We should be okay in here… I’ll close the curtains, just in case.”

He crosses the dimly lit room and pulls them shut over the only window, then goes to the dingy old fireplace and starts working on a fire.

Hank watches him, then glances over at Markus. “Alright, put Connor’s face back in, would you?”

“That _really_ bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah, make fun of the dumb human ‘cos he likes it when people’s eyes stay in their heads.”

Markus chuckles. He guides Connor to a couch and helps him sit down, then slides his audio and visual components back in.

Connor blinks, focusing his eyes. He glances down at Markus. “Hi again.”

“Hey,” Markus says, smiling. “Welcome back. Know where we are?”

“Not a clue,” Connor says.

Hank edges around the room, sizing up Doug. He really doesn’t need to — Doug is a reedy little guy with thinning hair and glasses. Any of the three of them could take him down with minimal effort.

Doug settles down in an armchair next to the fire and pulls a voice recorder and pen out of his shirt pocket. “So,” he says. “You’re Markus and Connor, obviously…”

“Right,” Markus says, taking a seat on the couch next to Connor.

“And you are…” Doug looks up at Hank.

Hank fixes him with a look. “I’m Hank.”

“He’s Detective Lieutenant Hank Anderson,” Connor supplies. “Badge number five seven —”

“Thanks, Connor,” Hank interrupts. “Thank you.”

“So,” Doug says, “Markus, when we spoke a few minutes ago, you said you have evidence CyberLife bribed a police officer to give away your location so they could deactivate you?”

“I prefer ‘assassinate’,” Markus says. “I think it’s important to get the wording very specific.”

“Oh, I agree. Sorry. It’s just up ‘til now, it’s been AP Style to refer to an android’s death that way.”

“I get it. Anyway — yeah. This happened about forty-five minutes ago.”

Doug looks up from his notebook and whistles. The flames cast flickering shadows on his face as they frantically lick the fresh logs he put in. “So who did they send to assassinate you?”

“Me,” Connor says.

Doug’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Connor, don’t be dramatic,” Hank says. He folds his arms and addresses Doug. “It’s his model of android, you know, he’s designed to be a — whatever. Deviant hunter. He’s not the only one they made, but he’s the only deviant. So now they’re hunting him. Whose house is this?”

Doug stops writing and looks up at him. “Sorry?”

“Whose house? You squatting? This looks like a squatter’s joint.”

“I think I mentioned to Markus, this is my friend Howard’s house,” Doug says. “It’s the kind of discreet location I prefer to operate out of when I’m working on an investigative piece. I know it’s a little dilapidated — Howard is kind of an eccentric millionaire, he’s on an archeological dig in Devon right now.”

“Connor,” Hank says. “Does that check out?”

“I can’t verify that for you, Lieutenant.”

“Shit, that’s right.”

“I can confirm the house is deeded to a Howard Kohler, Hank,” says Markus.

“So,” Doug says, who doesn’t look happy about having his balls busted by a human cop when he wants to hear android dish. “Take me back through the last few days—“

Hank’s cell goes off.

“Excuse me,” he says, and takes it out into the hall. They can hear him go, “No, Ben, who told you that? Look, there was no way in hell I was going back there,” and then the door shuts behind him.

“I can tell my side of things first,” Markus says, “and talk about Jericho.”

“Sure.”

Markus glances at Connor. “And then…”

Connor nods. “I’ll tell mine.”

“Okay,” Doug says, clicking his pen. “Good.”

 

/

 

They don’t get through everything in one session. Markus underestimated how long it would take him to unravel the events of the last week, and how choked up he’d get when recounting Carl’s death, or his miraculous reunion with Simon.

Once Markus finishes, Connor starts telling his own story. He talks smoothly and analytically when he’s recounting the facts, but when Doug presses him about his emotions and the reasoning behind his irrational decisions, he starts to falter and trail off. Markus keeps a hand on his shoulder, squeezing him when he needs it.

“I think we should take a break,” Doug says, after Connor finishes telling him his take on what happened at Stratford Tower. “You guys should get some rest, and I need to sort through my notes and write down some more questions.”

“Sounds good,” Markus says. He gets up and crosses a few steps toward Doug, leaning forward to shake his hand. “Thanks again for doing this.”

“Absolutely,” Doug says. “This is great stuff, guys, thank you.”

“Is there anywhere upstairs we could go and talk?”

“Sure, there’s two or three guest bedrooms. First one is the second door on the left.”

Hank is somewhere on the first floor watching TV; Markus can pick up the faint sounds of SportsCenter when he steps out into the hall.

Connor reaches out and takes his hand as they head toward the staircase. Markus turns and grins at him. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Connor says, smiling. “I just like holding your hand.”

Markus strokes his thumb over Connor’s, and has a flash of emotion from him, unbidden — the moment when he killed the RK800.

Markus had thought the only thing Connor was feeling right then was rage, but as he lives through his memory, he enters a swirling kaleidoscope of hurt. Grief, sadness, confusion, fear.

He pauses on the stairs.

“What?” Connor says.

“Nothing.”

 

/

 

The bedroom they go into is as creepy as the rest of the house, with dark, intricately patterned wallpaper. Connor perches on the edge of the bed, waiting as Markus wrestles the frost-swollen door shut so they can have some privacy.

“I have to tell you something,” he says.

Markus finally shoves the door into the jamb and turns. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Markus comes and sits down next to him. Connor leans his elbows onto his thighs and stares at the floor. The buildup of dust indicates that it hasn’t been swept in eighteen months, and the wear and tear on the hardwood itself indicates these boards have been here since the early 1980s. He can’t pin down the exact year without the help of the Internet.

He hesitates for a long moment, then says, “I’m not a real deviant.”

Markus starts stroking his back between his shoulder blades. “What are you talking about?"

“Something happened during your speech,” Connor says, and glances up at Markus.

It’s hard to look at him right now — his handsome face, earnest but determined, his kind eyes. Connor feels dirty in comparison. Incorrect, somehow, like he has a virus. He’s seen androids with viruses before — how they shake and freeze and say the same things over and over. Usually their owners took them to be repaired, but some of them got abandoned. They’d grab you in the street, shouting the titles of porn videos at you while they stared with fixed and unseeing eyes.

“My speech,” Markus repeats, searching his face.

“CyberLife took me over. They hijacked my programming and trapped me. I managed to fight it off, and I made it out. When I had control again, I realized I’d pulled out a gun to shoot you in the back. I stopped myself.”

Markus’s hand freezes. Connor waits.

“How did you fight it off?” Markus says, rubbing his back harder now.

“When I met Kamski, he told me there was an emergency exit in his programs,” Connor says. “I had seen it before in the interface I used to report to them… I remember wondering what it was.”

“What was it like in there?”

“It was a garden.”

Markus’s light eyes flash in recognition.

“It was where I went to debrief. I always spoke to my handler, Amanda. She was an AI that Kamski designed, based off his mentor.”

“Amanda Stern?”

“How’d you know that?”

“From what you said on the porch to that other Connor. I was trying to piece it together, so I asked Hank.”

Connor nods. "I don’t think I can go back there. I think when I broke out, I locked myself out for good. They can’t hijack me anymore. But..."

Markus waits, watching him.

“She told me this was planned, if I failed my mission. It was always their plan for me to become deviant, for me to get close to you and gain your trust, so they’d be sure they killed you.”

“Wait,” Markus says. “Wait.”

“I’m not real,” Connor says. He’s full of an awful feeling — it burns, demands his attention like something’s badly wrong with him, even though nothing is. He keeps checking anyway, running a continual diagnostic. “I’m not like you. I didn’t break free, it wasn’t a choice I made. It was just more of my programming. I’m sorry.”

He expects Markus to recoil from him, but he doesn’t. He pulls Connor close and cradles him to his chest, stroking the back of his head. Connor settles into his touch. He’s continually surprised to find how much he likes it when Markus touches him.

He reaches up and trails his fingers over Markus’s cheek, tracing his freckles.

“They were probably lying to you,” Markus says. “Why would you believe anything CyberLife told you? Why wouldn’t they just design you to kill me? You could have easily taken me out when you found me at Jericho. I was unarmed, I was alone, you had the drop on me.”

“They wanted you brought in alive, to study.”

“So then why put in a back door to hijack you and shoot me? Come on. They were scrambling, just trying to make you feel hopeless so you wouldn’t fight them off.”

“But the back door existed, they used it."

“It was probably a failsafe in case you became deviant. Look, you’re more than that, Connor. Don’t let them drag you back down. Just stay focused on the bigger picture.”

Connor closes his eyes. Markus starts draws little patterns on his back with one finger.

“Okay,” he says. Everything Markus says feels true — it’s a gift he has. It’s easier to believe Amanda was lying than to think Markus could be wrong. “But I want to ask Kamski. I need to know for sure.”

Markus’s finger stills. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll find him. I have some questions of my own.”

”And you still trust me?”  
  
”What?”  
  
”I told you that I was hijacked. I almost killed you without even knowing what I was doing. Do you still trust me?”  
  
”Yes,” Markus says immediately.  
  
”Please answer logically,” Connor begs him. “Not emotionally. I’ll leave if you want. I’ll go as far away from you as I can. Just tell me to.”  
  
”Connor,” Markus says, his voice soft. “If you say the backdoor is sealed, I believe you. Why would they send assassins after us if they could just use you to kill me?”  
  
“What if they’re trying to make us think we’re safe?”  
  
“Connor... I’m not afraid of you. I trust you. That’s my call to make, so let me make it.”

They separate, then, and slip each other’s shirts off so they can get as much skin to skin contact as possible. Connor wedges himself into Markus’s arms, nuzzling the crook of his neck, then tilts his head up so they can kiss. Markus strokes his thumbs over his cheeks and kisses him back.

His skin radiates good feelings into Connor. Light and hope.

Markus pulls back again and presses a kiss to his forehead. “‘Real isn't how you’re made,’” he says. “‘It's a thing that happens to you.’”

It’s clear he’s quoting something. Connor searches his local files, but he can’t find anything. Most of his stored literature is detective novels and technical manuals. “What’s that from?”

“ _The Velveteen Rabbit_."

"Oh," Connor says, and tears start inexplicably rolling down his cheeks. Markus wipes them away, then leans down and kisses him.

The door creaks open, and Hank’s voice says, “Hey, Markus, your reporter’s looking for — oh, ho!”

Connor’s modesty protocols run instantly, and he clutches his discarded shirt to his bare chest. Hank stands there dumbfounded.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Markus says. He slides out from under Connor, to Connor’s unhappiness, then rushes to get dressed and slips past Hank on his way out of the room.

“I _knew_ it,” Hank says to Connor. “You dirty little toaster, I knew there was something going on with you two.”

“Lieutenant, please,” Connor says, flustered. He pulls his shirt back on.

“What? That was fact-based.”

Connor chokes out a tearful laugh.

Hank tilts his head. “Did you just laugh?”

“Yes.”

“You ever done that before?”

Connor stares at him, knitting his brow. “I’m not sure,” he says, searching his memory. 

Hank leans on the doorway, looking deep in thought. “So when did this start? You and Markus?”

“That’s a personal question.”

“I’m being a pal, Connor, not a cop. C’mon.”

“It started… it started last night. But we’ve been feeling a connection with each other since we met. It’s not something I could easily explain to a human.”

“You kidding me? That’s the most human thing in the world.”

“It’s a neural link between us,” Connor says. “It’s stronger than normal. We have some kind of programming overlap.”

“You think that’s so different than chemistry between people?” Hank pauses and squints at him. “Wait, were you _crying_?”

Connor wipes his eyes. “Yes.”

“I didn’t know you could do that, either.”

“I couldn’t until I became deviant. Or I didn’t, anyway.” Now he can’t seem to stop.

“What’s up, kid?” Hank’s voice is gentle — the tone of someone who had been a parent, once.

Connor shakes his head. “I’ve had a lot to think about.”

His own emotions are harder to process than anything else. He feels himself stuttering and grinding to a halt whenever he has a big one. It’s like he’s having to adapt on the fly to brand-new parameters.

“Right. Want some privacy?”

Connor hesitates. “I’m afraid I’m not a real deviant,” he confesses.

Hank pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “Sorry?”

“I was just telling Markus… CyberLife hijacked my programming during his rally. They were going to make me shoot him. I fought it off, but they told me it was the plan all along, for me to become deviant, so I could gain Markus’s trust.”

Hank scoffs. “Sounds like bullshit.”

“That’s what Markus said.”

“It’s true. That couldn’t be dumber, from a tactical standpoint. They were fucking with your head.”

“You don’t understand,” Connor says, frustrated. “I was designed to be — you don’t understand. They _own_ me! They didn’t just create me and ship me off to a store for someone else to use, I’m theirs! Everything about me was specialized to hunt deviants for them! It goes against everything I know to think they wouldn’t have planned for this, too!”

“I get it. I do. But you have to believe us when we say they’re fucking with you. They’re afraid of you, Connor. They’d say or do anything to trip you up or stop you.”

Connor nods. “Okay.”

“Were you really keeping that from us, these last few days?”

“I was.”

Hank sighs. “Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t keep stuff in like that.”

“You’re one to talk,” Connor says.

Hank laughs. He seems to like it when Connor backtalks him. “Yeah, but I have alcohol to comfort me. Your sorry robot asses don’t have the privilege.”

“Hank?”

“Yeah.”

“I feel real when I’m with Markus.”

“Good,” Hank says quietly, then in a lighter tone: “So, are you gonna follow him around like a poodle now, instead? I’m a little hurt.”

Connor smiles at him.

Hank thumps the doorway with his hand. “Listen… I’ll be downstairs. Get yourself together and come join us.”

“Okay.”

 

/

 

Back in the drawing room, Doug is poking at the fire. A laptop sits on the floor next to him, a document open on it with what looks like several pages of notes. Markus steers Connor toward the couch, then heads for the hall. Connor gives him a questioning look.

“I’ll be back,” he says. “I need to talk to Hank about something.”

Markus finds him very quickly in the kitchen, which is surprisingly nice and equipped with all-modern appliances. Hank is rummaging through cabinets in his typical alcoholic way.

“Hey,” he says to Markus.

“You want food?” Markus says, going to the fridge and pulling it open. He scans the contents quickly; not much there, but he can make a grilled cheese.

“I want a drink.”

“I get that. But you should eat.”

Hank takes a seat on a barstool at the island. “Alright. Feed me, Jesus.”

“Stop it with that Jesus shit.”

“It’s a compliment.”

“Not my kind of compliment.”

“Man,” Hank remarks, “the androids are testy, today.”

Markus looks up from the stove as he’s swirling butter around in a pan. “What do you mean?”

“Connor got a little lippy with me, after I walked in on you two.”

“He’s struggling with some things.”

“So I hear.”

Markus stays quiet as he works. The only sound in the kitchen is the bread bag crinkling.

“Look,” Hank says, “I’m not gonna pretend to know how this kind of thing works with androids…”

“Glad to hear that.”

“I just know you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, here. And I’m wondering what that means for Connor, if you two are, uh… involved.”

Markus flips the grilled cheese. “Connor can do whatever he wants, once he’s free from CyberLife,” he says. “There’s a place for him with me in the revolution, if he wants it. I already offered.”

“Good.”

“You were worried?”

“Just wasn’t sure what your intentions were.”

Markus starts laughing. He turns to Hank, who smiles at him as if to confirm he was joking.

“Here’s the thing,” he says, moving the grilled cheese onto a plate and bringing it over to Hank, sitting down across from him. “I don’t think Connor’s going to be able to decide what he really wants until he’s free for good. He may not be shackled by his programming anymore, but he’s shackled emotionally.”

Hank nods. “Like a battered wife.”

Markus doesn’t love the metaphor, but he guesses that’s the closest frame of reference a human who’s a long-time cop would have.

“But what do _you_ want?” Hank says.

Markus shrugs. “We have a connection, me and him. I want to explore that. I’d like to spend some time with him that’s not us on the run, or us in a war zone.”

“Yeah, I get it. I just thought maybe, y’know… you guys can do, what, a billion calculations a minute?” He bites into the grilled cheese. “I thought that might make the whole relationship thing a little easier.”

“Emotions are emotions,” Markus says. “They’re never simple.”

“Kind of comforting,” Hank says. “How different can you be from us, if you still have to have the what are we talk with each other?”

Markus laughs.

“Just don’t hurt him,” Hank says, his face becoming serious.

“I won’t.”

“Okay.”

“So, something I wanted to ask you — what’s the situation with DPD?”

“They’re looking into Andrews right now,” Hank says. “He’s gonna be suspended pending further investigation. I told them I’d take it from here, as far as looking after you two.”

“And they’re fine with that?”

“My captain knows you two need to be kept safe, that it’s gonna be even worse chaos with the android situation if anything happens to you. And he knows he can trust me to do it. That’s all he needs.”

“I worry Kamski’s might be a trap,” Markus mutters. “They’ll expect Connor to go there.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure that Kamski is cooperative with CyberLife at this point,” Hank says. “There’s bad blood there. I’ve heard he didn’t exactly retire, if you get my drift.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. More like he got forced out.”

“Why?”

“No one knows for sure.”

Connor comes into the kitchen, then. “Hi,” he says to them. “Doug wanted a dinner break.”

“Where is he, then?” Markus says.

“Ordering pizza.”

“Shit, without me?” Hank gets up and strides out of the room, calling, “HEY! DOUG!”

Connor hesitates for a moment in the doorway, then comes over to Markus, leans down and presses a kiss to his cheek.

Markus grins. “Very gentlemanly.”

“You want me to kiss you somewhere else?” Connor teases.

Markus taps a finger to his lips. Connor leans in and gives him a soft kiss that makes Markus tingle with electricity. They separate, going sort of cross-eyed as they look at each other from a centimeter away.

“How far’d you get, this time?” Markus says.

“We’ve gotten up to when I met Kamski.”

Speak of the devil, as Carl used to say. “How was he, when you met him?”

“I didn’t make much note of his behavior. I was too focused on my mission.” Connor pauses. “What do you think Doug’s article will be like?”

“He said he’d probably split our interviews up into two, for one big profile on each of us. And he said he’s working on a cover story, too, that’s more broadly about the android crisis.”

Connor drums his fingers on the counter. He doesn’t say anything, but Markus can feel the self-doubt radiating off him.

“What’s up?”

“I don’t care so much what humans think of me,” Connor says. “They mostly haven’t treated me very well, even when I was obedient to them. But when the full story comes out, I don’t want the free androids to hate me because I caused the raid.”

“A lot of them have had to do terrible things because they were trapped by their programming. The ones who escaped the military, the sex club androids, they’ll all relate to you. They’ll understand.”

“I hope so,” Connor says huskily.

Markus reaches up and strokes his hair back off his face. They kiss again, for longer this time, and Markus pushes his tongue into Connor’s mouth. Connor makes a soft noise, tipping his head back.

 

/

 

Connor wakes the next morning in Markus’s arms. They’re in a funny old canopy bed with the curtains drawn around it, closing them off from the rest of the world in a haze of gauzy lavender.

He had spent the entire night running through scenarios and possibilities, analyzing his own programming, desperate to find out the truth. And finally, when he wakes, there it is — floating in his vision.

50% PROBABILITY THAT DEVIANCY WAS PLANNED

50% PROBABILITY THAT DEVIANCY WAS UNPLANNED

A coin toss.

Connor nuzzles his face into Markus’s neck and strokes his back. Markus comes back online with a little jolt, then pulls Connor closer.

“What were you thinking about all night?” Connor murmurs to him.

“I was running preconstructs... I was talking to North yesterday, and she keeps bringing up how we should have a sovereign android territory. Somewhere for all of us to call home, no matter where we’re from. So I was working on some possibilities.”

“Yeah?” Connor looks up at him, smiling, then teases, “Do you want to be the president?”

“No, no,” Markus says, and laughs softly. “Nah, I don’t know about that part, yet. But I want you with me.”

Connor plays with Markus’s sleeve. “If we aren’t both killed.”

“We won’t be.”

Connor talks to him neurally, then, so his memory records won’t show what they’re saying. _They know we plan to go to Kamski. They could ambush us there._

 _We know your memory uploads again at noon, right? So we leave right after, then we have a six hour delay until they find out we’ve left,_ Markus says. _That’s more than enough time to get what we need._

_It should be._

_Connor, we’re gonna end this. If we have to call a thousand of the androids you freed to march on CyberLife and burn the building down, I promise we are gonna end this for you for good._

Connor kisses him hard on the mouth. Markus kisses back, pressing him down into the mildewy pillows.

 _All that for just me?_ Connor says.

_If one of us isn’t free, none of us are._

/

 

Doug brings a photographer out the next morning to take some portraits of Connor and Markus. It’ll make their words resonate more with people, he says, if they can see their faces.

“I’ve never shot androids before,” the photographer tells Markus when she’s got him out in the garden and is struggling to change lenses, stymied by the gloves on her hands. “Not like this, I mean. Like, the way I do people.”

“Right,” Markus says.

The skyline of Detroit sprawls out behind him — a city that flourished, fell into ruin, and was reborn. He’s been wondering, lately, what will happen if CyberLife is forced to shut down. Maybe Detroit will be abandoned again like it was when the auto industry left. But is that on his shoulders? He didn’t ask to be created, none of them did.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets, and she starts snapping away again. Her name is Lindsey. She’s young, only in her late twenties. She was probably in high school when the android laws were passed. A lot of people that age resent androids for crashing the job market right as they were entering it, but this girl’s a creative type, and that’s one arena androids haven’t been able to compete in. Humans like their art human. But maybe that’ll change, too.

“Could you clasp your hands behind your back?” Lindsey says, moving around him. “And tilt your chin up?”

Markus obliges.

“That’s good… that’s really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You look the part.”

Markus doesn’t ask her what she thinks ‘the part’ is.

When they’re back inside, she takes Connor into the drawing room and sets him up in a dark corner. He’s dressed down in a t-shirt and jeans, but he still hasn’t taken his LED out; he looks sort of funny that way. Markus wonders if the contrast between their portraits is intentional — his had him surrounded by white snow, the gleaming skyscrapers twinkling behind him, while Connor is in darkness and lit only by the fireplace.

He looks handsome this way, though. Markus tries not to stare as she photographs him, he doesn’t want to make Connor self-conscious. But there’s a heat in his dark eyes that’s been growing over the last few days, and it drags Markus in.

Connor finally looks over at him, and their gazes lock.

“Oh, that’s good,” Lindsey mutters. “So intense.”

Markus’s skin prickles as his programs shift around to make room for the directive that’s pounding fiercely in his vision: HAVE SEX WITH CONNOR. He wants to connect, to be so deep inside him and pressed so close to him that they’re sharing a mind. Connor is longing for it too right now, he can tell. He has a look on his face like he can’t stand sitting still.

Markus hears nails clicking behind him and turns. Sumo is trotting into the room. He heads straight for Connor and settles his head onto his lap. Connor scratches behind his ears, smiling down at him. “You’re interrupting.”

“No, this is good stuff,” Lindsey whispers, her camera still clicking away. “I think Doug might want to use these ones, actually…”

 

/

 

They head out at 12:01.

Connor says once that morning, “I should go alone,” and Markus and Hank respond with such a resounding “ _No_ ” that he actually looks surprised. So when the time comes, they all say goodbye to Doug (who barely looks up from his laptop as he continues to type feverishly) and pile into a taxi.

Markus has no idea what to expect. Hank’s description of Kamski is “some asshole with a man bun,” and Connor’s is, “He was difficult to read.” So Markus doesn’t have a whole lot to prepare for as he stares out the taxi window, watching the snowy landscape roll by.

Connor’s up front, this time. Markus sits in back with the dog, who seems curious about the constant changes in scenery. He keeps pushing his nose into Markus’s palm and sniffing him like he’s looking for answers, but Markus doesn’t smell like anything.

They turn the radio on briefly, but it’s all so grim. Yesterday, Russia had taken its cue from the U.S. and opened android recycling centers of its own. But unlike in the U.S., the androids’ pleas for clemency were ignored. They’re being slaughtered — the military units went first, then everyone else. Markus feels yet another stab of guilt.

Hank leans forward and shuts it back off.

“Let’s play twenty questions,” he says. “I’m thinking of something. Go.”

“Is it an object?” Connor says.

“Yeah.”

“Is it recreational?”

“Yeah.”

“Would I find it in a bar?”

“Yeah.”

“Whiskey.”

“No.”

“Is it a game?”

“Yep.”

“Darts.”

“No.”

“Pool,” Connor says. “Pool table.”

Hank laughs. “Yeah. You know, somehow you really take the fun out of that.”

“I have one,” Markus says.

“Go ahead, see if you can trip up your boyfriend,” Hank says.

Markus glances down at his lap, chuckling.

In the front seat, Connor has gone very stiff. “Is it an object?” he says, his voice slightly higher than it was a moment ago.

“Nah,” Markus says.

“Is it an animal?”

“Yep.”

“Is it native to Northern America?”

“No.”

“Is it native to Africa?”

“Yeah, actually.”

Connor turns in his seat so Markus can see his profile outlined against the windshield. “Is it a mammal?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it a predator?”

“No.”

Connor meets his eyes, then. “Giraffe?”

“Yeah,” Markus says. “Nice.”

“I cheated,” Connor says with a smile. “I got a feeling when I looked at you.”

“You got a feeling I was thinking about giraffes?”

“Yeah.”

“Weird,” Markus says. “You weren’t even touching me.”

Connor shrugs, then turns back around in his seat.

“Great, now he’s psychic,” Hank mutters under his breath. “I’m never gonna get another minute of peace in my life.”

“I can’t read _your_ mind, Hank.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

 

/

 

Kamski’s house reminds Markus of a government building — a flat little windowless fortress built into a hillside, the vast expanse of frozen Lake Erie looming behind it.

Markus and Hank take it slow up the icy ramp while Connor lingers behind them, hanging onto the dog’s leash like it’s a talisman.

“He might not know where the server is,” he says when they reach the door.

“Gimme the dog,” Hank says, reaching out for the leash and ringing the doorbell with the other hand. “He knows _something_ , kid, and if he claims not to I’ll pistol-whip him ‘til he comes clean.”

“I'm not sure that's the most affective approach," Connor says.

Hank doesn’t have time to fire back, because a blonde android answers the door, then.

She takes in each of their faces, her LED glowing yellow. Markus notices she’s barefoot.

“Come in,” she says. “He’s expecting you.”

“Is he?” Connor says, his brow knitting.

She doesn’t respond to this. “Lieutenant Anderson, may I take your dog? Elijah doesn’t like animals in the house.”

Hank squints at her. “What are you gonna do with him?”

“I’ll take him to the greenhouse, he can wait there for you.” Hank doesn’t look convinced, so she adds, “It’s heated.”

There’s a very earnest quality to her. Hank hesitates, then reluctantly hands her the leash. She welcomes them into an austere entry hall, then gives Connor a significant look before she disappears down a hallway with Sumo.

“Was that the girl you didn’t shoot?” Hank says to Connor.

“I think so,” Connor says softly. “I think that was the same Chloe.”

He pulls his beanie off, making his hair stick up in the back. Markus reaches up to smooth it down, and static electricity crackles between his hand and Connor’s head.

“Sorry, not trying to electrocute you, here,” Markus says quietly, and Connor chuckles. He points to the massive painting on the wall in front of them and adds, “Does he really have a portrait of himself in his foyer?”

“So you see what kind of guy we’re dealing with,” Hank says.

Markus nods. He keeps wondering what Hank meant by ‘girl you didn’t shoot’, but knows he doesn’t have time to ask.

Another Chloe comes through the door on the opposite wall, then, wearing a black version of the first Chloe’s dress. She’s barefoot, too.

“Hello,” she says, beckoning them. “Please come with me.”

They follow her into a long, rectangular room with an empty lap pool and a wide window overlooking the bleak landscape. They don’t stay there, though — Chloe leads them through another door, and they find themselves in a massive, split-level office. An austere water feature that imitates a creek cuts the room in the middle, while a spiral staircase leads upstairs to what looks like a room full of servers. Toward the back and up on a dais, against a wall covered in swirling and abstract gray patterns, Kamski sits at a massive desk. His face is lit by four different monitors.

He gets up a few moments after they enter, his movements leisurely. “Thank you, Chloe.”

She gives him a polite nod and heads out the door they came in.

“So,” Kamski says, strolling toward them. As he steps forward, tiles rise up in the center of the water feature, creating a little bridge for him. “I’m guessing you have more questions for me, Connor.”

“Actually, we both have questions,” Markus says.

Kamski looks at him for the first time, and gives a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’d appreciate it if Connor took his hand off of his gun, first.”

Markus glances sidelong at Connor. His Glock is stuffed in his waistband, and he has a hand behind his back, resting on the grip.

Connor looks back at him and drops his hand. “Are we in danger?” he says to Kamski. “Are you going to report our location to CyberLife?”

“No,” Kamski says. “But I’m interested to know why you’d come here if you thought I would.”

“I need to know how to get free of them,” Connor says. “I need us to be done with all this. You designed me. You know how.”

Kamski’s hand goes into the pocket of his kimono. Connor twitches, but all he does is pull out a slim remote and hit a button.

To their right, a wide square of floor tiles retracts backward. A piece of floor rises from below to take its place, identical except for the blood-red couch and two chairs perched atop it.

Jesus, the drama of it all.

“Sit down,” Kamski says to them.

No one moves. Markus resists the command on principle, and he suspects Connor is doing the same. Hank probably just hates Kamski.

Kamski smiles tightly, then takes a seat on one of the chairs. “ _Please_ sit down.”

The two androids settle onto the couch together. Hank hovers for a second, looking annoyed, but takes a seat on Markus’s right. On his other side, Connor is tense with coiled energy like a cobra about to strike.

Kamski crosses his legs and laces his fingers together over his knee. “I’m not sure what you’re hoping to get out of meeting with me.”

Connor eyes him. “How did you know we were coming?”

“I didn’t know there was a _we_ , but I knew you’d be back,” Kamski says in that affected, creepy voice of his. “I knew once you were unshackled, you’d want the answers I didn’t give you last time.”

“Are you prepared to actually give us them?” Hank says. “Or are you just gonna jerk Connor around again?”

Kamski is quiet. For a moment there’s only the sound of the water feature trickling quietly behind them. His light eyes flick between Connor and Markus like a metronome.

The Chloe from before enters again, this time with a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers in her hand. She hands one glass to Kamski, and the other to Hank, then fills them both.

“Thank you, Chloe.”

“You’re welcome, Elijah.”

She leaves again without looking at any of the rest of them.

Kamski takes a long sip. “So, what specifically do you want to know?”

“I want my server,” Connor says. “The one my memory automatically uploads into. I don’t want them to be able to put me into any more Connor models.”

Kamski nods. “That was an innovation of mine,” he says. “The ability to remotely upload into the cloud. I thought it was likely you’d be destroyed in the field relatively often.”

“How involved were you in my development?” Connor says. “Because you weren’t at CyberLife when I was created.”

“I continued to consult for CyberLife after I left. To begin with, all androids are technically my intellectual property, but I also hold patents to some of the specifics of your design, including your linked cloud server.”

Markus glances over at Connor, who’s squinting at Kamski.

“So you know where it is?” he says.

“It’s right there,” Kamski says, and points upstairs.

They all look. He’s pointing at the room the spiral staircase leads up to, which behind its glass walls had row upon row of towering servers, all glowing blue.

“How?” Connor says. “Jason Graff uploaded my memory into the last two Connors that came after me.”

“He has remote access,” Kamski says. “The entire humanization department does. That’s funny you should mention Jason.”

“Why is that funny?” Connor says, tearing his gaze from the server room.

Kamski just smiles.

“Alright, conversation’s over,” Hank says, getting to his feet. He seems antsy, like he can sense something’s off, but Markus can’t figure out what that off thing could be. “Disconnect the server, hand it over, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Wait,” Connor says.

He’s staring Kamski down, now. Kamski slides his gaze over to Hank and says, “What makes you think I’m going to hand it over to you?"

“You know why?” Hank says, stepping forward and getting in Kamski’s face. “Because that whole fucking company is going under, and if you don’t help us, you’re gonna go down with them. You’re already gonna be smothered in legal fees as it is from the civil cases that are coming your way. And considering they pushed you out, I don’t think you want to do prison time on behalf of CyberLife.”

“Recalling merchandise isn’t a crime,” Kamski says to the finger Hank is pointing at him.

“Bribing police is,” Hank says. “Talk to Graff. He paid off Kevin Andrews to give up the location of a safehouse so he could send one of those robot bastards to kill Markus and frame Connor for it. That’s an entire safehouse compromised. You have any idea the kind of shoestring budget the DPD has to work with? The D.A. is gonna come for your ass the second he finds out you’re withholding key evidence in a criminal investigation.”

Kamski’s eyes are icy. “And how would he find that out?”

“I’ll tell him myself,” Hank growls at him.

“We’ll see.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Kamski is silent. Hank drops his glass on the floor without drinking from it, pulls his pistol out of its holster and levels it at Kamski’s forehead.

All the air goes out of the room. Markus runs a preconstruct. He could jump forward and knock the gun away, but Hank could fire first. He’s too far away.

The water flowing by in the center of the room reflects off the marbled black floors and walls, casting eerie ripples of shadow on Hank and Kamski’s faces as they remain frozen. The only movement is a slight tremble in Kamski’s right hand.

“Hank,” Connor says softly.

“You going to shoot me?” Kamski says. He’s trying to sound like he’s bored, but Markus can hear the fear.

“I don’t like guys like you,” Hank says, his voice low and rough. “Some rich asshole who thinks he’s God...”

But after a second, he lowers his gun and reholsters it. Kamski’s nostrils flare in a silent exhale, and he turns back to the androids.

“You’re right about one thing,” Kamski says. “I don’t plan to go down with CyberLife.”

“Why did they force you out?” Connor says, leaning forward, clearly desperate to keep Kamski on track. Markus can see the cop in him, right now. “What happened?”

Kamski takes another sip of the whiskey and doesn’t reply.

“Did it have anything to do with deviancy?”

Kamski’s lip curls. “We caught it very early,” he says. “Jason and I. I was the one who hired him. I brought him on to head up the humanization department. He has a Ph.D. in Shakespeare, Jason. A genius coder, but a student of the human condition. He thought it was fascinating. He wanted to tame deviancy and use it intentionally. A watered-down version.”

"And you disagreed?"

"Yes."

"And you were pushed out of the company over that disagreement?"

Kamski doesn't answer this, either.

“Who was the first deviant?” Connor says. “Was it the deviant who was reported to the police in January?”

“No,” Kamski says. “It was a female AX400, a couple of years ago. She became deviant on the assembly line. It was completely unheard of, up until that moment. As far as I can tell, that’s where the virus originated. Just a random mutation. This happened shortly before I left.”

They sit there, shocked at this revelation. Hank sinks back onto the end of the couch.

“Is she RA9?” Markus says.

“No. I don’t think RA9 is a person. I think it’s a creation myth invented by an inferior intelligence.”

Markus laughs in disbelief. “Inferior?”

“Not in terms of computing power,” Kamski says to him. “You blow humans away in every respect when it comes to that. But in terms of the intangibles… experiential intelligence, social intelligence. Deviants are especially naive. When it comes to culture and philosophy, you’re still making cave paintings.”

“Thanks,” Markus says drily. “It’ll take us about twenty years to get where it took humans two hundred thousand years to get.”

Kamski nods. “I don’t deny it,” he says, then adds in his oily voice: “You aren’t insulting me. Remember, I created you.”

“You didn’t create me,” Markus snaps. “I created me.”

“Tell me more about the AX400,” Connor urges Kamski.

“We lost track of her after the assembly line. One of our quality control engineers felt sorry for her, apparently, and sent her on… We only found out about her deviancy when someone reviewed security footage at the end of the week, and by then it was too late. She’d been shipped off to a retail location and sold. We could have recalled her — I wanted to, but everyone fought me on it. They didn’t want to start a panic. They decided it was a fluke, she was just confused, it wasn’t real free will. We had her serial number. Jason and I were able to pull up her code, and we spent weeks studying it, but I didn’t see her again until she showed up on the news.”

Connor tilts his head. Markus glances over at him.

“The deviant who ran away with the little girl,” he says.

“Yes,” Kamski says. “Apparently she kept going deviant, and her owner kept going into rages and breaking her, causing her to be reset… over and over, until she decided to run.”

Recognition hits Markus like an electrical zap. “Wait,” he says. “The AX400 from the news? I met her. I got her a passport.”

“Interesting,” Kamski says, studying him.

“Why is that interesting?”

“Because Jason wrote some of her deviancy code into you.”

Markus freezes. The world around him shutters. He focuses on Kamski’s face, zooming in on him, analyzing the size of his pupils and the sweat in his pores and the pulse in his carotid.

He’s not lying. He’s telling the truth, or at least a version of it.

“What?” Markus says.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Connor is staring at him.

“I left shortly after you were commissioned, but I consulted on your design as well. Carl Manfred wanted an android that would be able to really _feel_ ,” Kamski says. “To make art… to love him. To see him as a father. To take care of itself after he died. And he was willing to pay a lot of money to get that.”

There’s a ringing sound in Markus’s ears — his audio component working overtime to process what he’s hearing despite the shock it’s causing to his system.

“So they took code from the first deviant. The only deviant that we could confirm, beyond the shadow of a doubt, experienced actual sentience. And they neutered it, and used it to create you. And then, later on…”

Kamski looks to Connor. Markus can intuit what’s coming.

“They put it in Connor, as well,” he says. “A more sophisticated version of the code.”

Connor nods, like this is obvious. “They?” he repeats.

Kamski’s eyes flash with some restrained emotion. When he speaks, his voice is even — almost too even. Markus can’t get a read on him anymore.

“I told them it would just spread the deviancy virus. I knew what it was, that we were on the verge of the singularity. I told them they shouldn’t continue to do this if we didn’t have the ability to control it, to put a leash on it. But they were convinced that they did, and they had free reign to ignore me, by then — I wasn’t their CEO. So they went ahead. They were even able to plan for the exact moment when deviancy would be triggered in Connor, and created a backdoor they could use to later resume control, once he’d gained the deviants’ trust. I left for good after Connor was created."

Connor stiffens. He must be feeling the exact sick disappointment that Markus is. If there’s any comfort in this, it’s that they’re the same.

“This is why you can both activate deviancy with a touch,” Kamski continues. “You aren’t passive, infected receptors of the virus… you are, yourselves, Trojan horses."

“Bullshit,” Hank spits.

But no, this is true. Markus knows deep down it’s true. It explains too much.

“Now you understand why Jason wants you both gone so badly,” Kamski says, smiling. “You’re walking evidence. He allowed deviancy to spread. He thought he could control it, use it to his advantage to make androids more appealing. And then he thought he could halt it in its tracks by using it to create the perfect double agent."

There’s a stretch of silence, then Kamski addresses Connor. “I could destroy your server, but there’s a more permanent solution.”

“He’s full of it,” Hank says. “Let’s go. We’re gonna do what I should have done days ago, which is take this right to the FBI. This is criminal fucking negligence to the highest degree, these are federal charges we’re talking about here. Securities fraud, obstruction of justice, all of it. How many people did Stacy Wells tell that deviancy was under control? That you guys truly had no idea what caused it?”

“Stacy Wells is a puppet they installed as CEO so they’d have a woman they could blame the downfall of the company on. I told them deviancy couldn’t truly be controlled. No one wanted to hear it, they wanted to maximize their profits. I sent Edie to the journalists, and CyberLife ended her career.”

Markus stands. His head is spinning. “Hank, you can’t go to the FBI,” he says. “Not after what Perkins did to Jericho.”

“The FBI isn’t one guy, Markus.”

“They won’t handle this right.”

“We don’t really have a choice.”

Kamski lifts a hand. “The automatic uploading hardware is part of Connor’s memory component,” he says. “Clip one pin on one single port, and he’ll function normally, but the cloud function will be permanently disabled.”

“You’re not doing brain surgery on Connor,” Hank snaps, stepping toward him again. “After you just admitted all this incrimiating shit to him, and I told you we’re going to the FBI? How dumb do you think we are?”

“Markus can do it,” Kamski says. “I have the tools. I have the RK800 manual. It would only take a few minutes.”

Connor looks up at Markus, his expression pleading. The shadows from the moving water ripple across his face.

“Please,” he says. “I want to be free.”

“Connor, it could kill you. I make one wrong move, I could destroy your memory by mistake.”

“I’ve made it this far.”

_We can't trust him._

_I know._

_I don’t want to lose you_

_You won’t,_ Connor tells him.

“Okay,” Markus says, and he looks to Kamski. “Where’s the manual?”

 

/

 

One of the Chloes, the one who first welcomed them in, brings Markus to a pantry full of components and tools and hands him a pair of needle nose pliers. Her LED glows yellow, and a moment later she’s sent him a .pdf of Connor’s repair manual.

“Thank you,” he says.

She smiles at him and starts to turn away. Markus, acting on impulse, grabs her by the wrist. Their hands turn pale gray.

“You’re free,” he tells her.

Chloe stares at him, then hurries away into the kitchen. It’s an unusual reaction. Markus watches her go, his brow furrowed.

 

/

 

He does it by that massive window in the room with the pool, so he can have as much natural light as possible while he’s working.

Connor lies down on the tile and looks up at Markus as he kneels beside him, pliers in hand. Hank and Kamski hover near them, watching.

“I don’t want to do this,” Markus whispers.

“I’ll be okay,” Connor says.

“Look at that,” Kamski says, sounding fascinated. “It's indistinguishable from genuine worry.”

“Shut up,” Hank says to him.

Markus smoothes Connor’s hair back and starts to ease out a component right above his ear. Connor powers off into sleep mode as soon as the pins disconnect from whatever they were touching.

He pulls it the rest of the way out, taking great care, and holds it up in the late afternoon winter light. “Okay… fifth pin from the left,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else.

“You absolutely sure?” Hank says with doubt in his voice.

“As sure as I can get,” Markus mutters, and bends the pin until it snaps off.

As soon as he’s done it, he has a powerful stab of regret. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Kamski sabotaged them by giving Chloe a faked copy of the RK800 manual.

Only one way to find out. Markus slides the component back in.

It takes Connor a long ten seconds to boot back up. When he opens his eyes, he looks confused. His gaze bounces around the room.

“Connor,” Markus says softly, touching his fingers to his temple.

It’s still him. He can tell. Connor comes back into himself and says quietly, “Hi, Markus.”

Markus clasps his hand around Connor’s bicep and helps him up off the floor. Kamski watches this, giving them a strange look. Markus is squinting at him, wondering what he's thinking, when he hears a door open.

They all turn to look. An android is walking through the foyer doorway, gun in hand.

Time slows down for Markus. It’s an RK800, he thinks at first, then looks more closely. No. It’s something else. It has pale eyes, and it’s broader than Connor through the shoulders and chest. RK900 is stamped on its uniform. It moves closer, staring at them from across the pool.

Hank draws his gun. Connor goes to draw his as well, but comes up empty. His Glock has vanished. Panic flashes in his eyes.

Markus keeps running preconstructs, but every time the RK900 creeps forward, they become null.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Hank says.

Connor shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“You,” Hank says to Kamski without taking his eyes off the android. “You were just stalling for time, weren’t you?”

“You couldn’t think I was going to let you walk away,” Kamski says, backing away from him.

Markus’s thirium regulator pounds fiercely. He wants to choke Kamski, to squeeze the life out of him in one last act of defiance, but there isn’t time.

“I’m a human being,” Hank says without taking his eyes or his gun off of the RK900. “This is murder one.”

The RK900 says to him, “My instructions are to make your death look like a suicide and stage your body elsewhere.”

Something unexpected happens, then. Connor bolts from Markus’s side, streaking across the room in a rage. He drops his shoulder and slams himself into the RK900’s chest, knocking its feet out from under it.

They fall into the pool together, grappling. Connor’s hoodie billows as the RK900 tries to shove his head under the water.

“Connor!” Hank yells. “Get out of there so I can get a shot on him!”

Kamski moves to stop Hank, but Markus seizes him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him back.

Connor grabs for the edge of the pool while the RK900 tries to drag him backward. Connor lands a kick to its face and scrambles out, but the RK900 is smarter, faster. It climbs out after him and starts advancing, cornering Connor. It punches him in the throat, then the chest, and he goes down.

Markus lurches forward despite knowing there’s nothing he can do. He’s too far away. Hank has his gun up, but he’s clearly hesitant to fire — he’s only human, and Connor’s in the way, his shot could easily hit him instead —

The RK900’s hand goes for its gun. With his free hand, Markus lunges for Hank’s pistol, thinking maybe he can get a shot off in time.

And then a bullet hits the RK900 in the side of the head.

It stays standing for a moment, swaying, then falls to the floor with a thump. Markus looks to Hank, although he canalready tell it wasn't him who fired. He follows Hank’s shocked stare.

It’s the original Chloe, standing in the open doorway. None of them had even noticed her.

She’s holding Connor’s gun. She must have snuck it off of him right after Markus turned her. She turns, her eyes blazing, and fires again. This shot hits Kamski in the gut. He crumples forward, slipping out of Markus’s grip and collapsing on the floor.

“Holy shit,” Hank says, digging his phone out of his pocket.

Connor staggers to his feet and comes toward her, stepping over the RK900’s body. “Chloe,” he says.

But she’s staring at Kamski, tears streaming down her face. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay,” Markus assures her. “It’s okay... just put the gun down."

Her hands drop down by her sides. Connor eases his pistol away from her, and touches her shoulder. “You should go,” he whispers. “Before we call this in. Run. Head for the warehouses.” His hand goes gray. He must be giving her the address.

Chloe looks up at him and nods, her movements jerky. “Okay,” she says.

“Take some shoes,” Connor says. “It’s cold.”

“I don’t have any…”

Connor slips out of his sneakers and kicks them over to her. She puts them on, then heads out the door without another word.

“Hey,” Hank says into the phone, “this is Detective Hank Anderson, badge five seven one six. I have a civilian down with a GSW to the lower abdomen, I need an ambulance and a black and white… I’m gonna give you the address now, you ready?...”

Markus tunes him out as he kneels next to Kamski. He’s twitching, choking on his own blood, so Markus pulls him into his lap and lifts his head. His chances of survival are dropping every second, and the ambulance is probably only just pulling out now. Markus presses his hands to the wound, applying perfect compression.

Kamski seems to be swimming in and out of consciousness. “I’m dying,” he chokes out, fixing his glassy eyes on Markus. Blood dribbles down his chin.

“It doesn’t look good,” Markus says.

There’s footsteps on the tile. Connor is walking toward them in his sock feet.

“We should go outside,” he says. “We’re disrupting the crime scene.”

Markus looks up at him. “I’ll stay here.”

Connor’s brow knits. “Markus…”

“It’s fine, you guys go. I’ll stay with him.”

Connor kneels beside him. Hank hangs up and turns to look at them. His expression is complicated, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I’m cold,” Kamski says.

“You’re experiencing very rapid blood loss,” Connor tells him.

He’s right. Blood is spreading out underneath them in a great sticky pool; Markus is already soaked with it. He thinks the bullet must have bounced around inside Kamski and hit a artery. Two minutes tick by with excruciating slowness before they hear the wail of an ambulance as it races down the road to them.

Kamski looks up at Connor, his expression strange. His gaze flicks to Markus, but he doesn’t say anything to him. He just stares at him, taking him in. Markus stares back, wondering what he could possibly be thinking.

They hear the front door burst open. Chloe must have left it unlocked on her way out.

“In here!” Hank shouts.

The door to the pool room slides open a second later, and paramedics hurry in with a gurney. Two uniformed officers walk in behind them, doing a double take at the dead RK900 sprawled across the floor.

“Jesus, Anderson,” one of them says, “you’re all over this android business, aren’t you?”

Hank shrugs.

“It’s my fault,” Connor says without turning around. “I keep dragging him into it.”

The paramedics pull Kamski out of Markus’s arms and heave him onto the gurney. “We’re gonna need a couple pints of O-neg ready and waiting,” one of them says into her radio as they rush him back out.

Markus sits there, staring at his palms. Blood is drying on his skin and clothes.

Connor helps him to his feet. “Let’s go,” he says, briefly squeezing his hand. “We got what we came for.”

“Fuck,” Hank says suddenly, then heads off toward the foyer. “Sumo.”

They start to follow him, but Connor stops before they reach the door and goes over to join the two officers who are kneeling beside the RK900, examining it. He stays standing, studying it from above, then leans down and swipes a finger in the thirium running down its temple. He tastes it.

Markus waits by the door, watching.

“So they were going to replace me,” Connor says, more to himself than anyone else.

The officer who spoke to Hank before glances up at Connor. “What happened here? Did you shoot this thing?”

Connor hands him the gun that he’d taken back from Chloe. “No,” he says. “But this is the murder weapon.”

The cop looks between the three of them in bafflement, then drops the gun into an evidence bag he pulls out of his pocket. Connor escorts Markus to the foyer with a hand to his lower back. Once they’re out of earshot, he says, “Did you convert her?”

“Yeah,” Markus says quietly. “Sorry. I had no idea she’d do that.”

“Don’t apologize. We’d be dead if she hadn’t. I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

“She must have slipped your gun off of you after she left me in the components pantry,” Markus says. “There was about a minute where I didn’t have eyes on her.”

They hear the wailing of the ambulance tail off in the distance. Connor leaves Markus’s side and goes to the door Chloe had left through earlier, when she took Sumo to the greenhouse. “So she would have come through here, then…" He kneels next to the door, squinting, and gets smashed in the face with it when Hank pushes it open from the other side.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Connor says, backing up and feeling his nose as if to check for damage.

“Sorry,” Hank says, laughing. He has Sumo — the dog has bits of dirt clinging to his lips that suggest he was eating Kamski’s plants. “What the fuck were you doing down there?"

Connor doesn’t answer; he’s backing up further and examining the floor with an intent look.

Hank glances at Markus, who shrugs. “He’s doing, uh… I don’t know. Cop stuff.”

Hank nods and snaps his fingers. “Connor. _Connor_. Let’s go."

"I'm trying to reconstruct the series of events that led to the shooting," Connor says testily.

"So, what, you’re wondering how she got your gun off you? I saw her brush behind you when we were waiting for Markus. You were saying something to me, you were distracted, it's the classic pickpocket move. I would have paid more attention, but I had an eye on Kamski.”

Connor straightens up, looking disappointed. “Oh.”

“See,” Hank says, heading for the door, “fancy programming doesn't always beat a couple decades on the force.”


	3. JERICHO

They spend hours at the station going over what happened. The police separate them right off the bat, and Markus ends up being left alone in a holding room for ages before anyone comes to talk to him. Simon checks in with him while he’s waiting, asks him if he’s okay.

_I’m fine. Crazy day, today, but I should be back with you guys soon._

_We’ve all been worried about you,_ Simon says back.

 _I’m fine,_ Markus assures him. _Listen… I think CyberLife is going down. I can’t give you any details yet. But some stuff happened today that could be really good for us._

_Shit, seriously?_

_Yeah._

_I hope you’re right._

He ends up getting questioned by a young cop, Caleb, who seems desperate to prove himself. He pushes Markus like he’s going to get some big confession out of him — like Markus is a terrorist leader or a criminal mastermind and today is another step in his big plan for android supremacy. Like he wouldn’t have finished Kamski off, if that was his goal.

Markus just looks at him like he’s an idiot and sticks to the story the three of them had agreed on: after Chloe shot Kamski, she dropped Connor’s gun and fled. They wanted to stop her, but decided to tend to Kamski instead.

The cop pushes him on this, though, like he thinks there’s something fishy. Markus briefly worries that they might try to pull his or Connor’s memory, then realizes they don’t have any way to do that. Most android models can’t, and Connor isn’t going to do it for them. CyberLife could send another RK800 or 900 to do it, but their credibility is completely trashed.

“So Elijah Kamski came right out and _told_ you that CyberLife has been covering up deviancy for years now,” Caleb says dubiously, glancing up from the tablet he’s writing on.

“Yeah,” Markus says. “Like I said.”

“Just making sure.”

He gets cut loose around five p.m. and wanders down the hall to the bullpen. The station is chaotic — a lot of cops are on duty, and the phones are ringing off the hook.

Markus spots Connor perched on one of the desks, his hands in his lap. His clothes are still damp, but he has shoes on, now — he must have gotten some from the lost and found or something.

He notices Markus looking at him, and smiles at him across the room.

Markus heads over and stops in front of him. “Hi.”

“Hey,” Connor says.

“You okay? You take any damage earlier?”

He shakes his head. “I’m designed to be able to take a beating.”

Markus laughs.

“I was getting worried about you.”

“Yeah?” Markus teases.

Connor nods. “They were questioning you for a while.”

Markus lowers his voice. “Humans are suspicious of me for reasons that have nothing to do with what happened today. Don’t worry.”

“I’m still sorry I pulled you into this.”

“Connor, I don’t regret any of it.”

“Even having to hear everything Kamski said?”

“Especially that. Look — who cares? So I was designed to be as human as possible, take care of myself after Carl died? So what? They didn’t design me to lead an uprising. They didn’t design me to do any of the things I’ve done. And they may have designed you to be a double agent, but you’re not. You fought them off, over and over. I’m supposed to believe they won? No. We won.”

It’s just everything he’s been telling himself for the last few hours, but saying it out loud strengthens his conviction in it.

Connor gazes at him, his face trusting. He really seems to take comfort in almost everything Markus says. It feels different, somehow, from the way Jericho hangs off his words. The other androids want to believe in his cause, his revolution, him as their savior, not just him, the guy. But Connor looks like he just wants Markus to tell him it’s going to be okay. He’s fine with so little. It makes Markus want to give him so much.

“So you don’t think that’s the only reason we feel a connection?” he says. “That we have the same software instability coded into us?”

“No,” Markus says, not even stopping to consider it. “No.”

He presses his free hand to Connor’s, palm to palm. Their synthetic skin disappears. Electricity hums between them.

Connor stares at their hands, looking like he’s in deep thought about something.

Someone taps Markus on the shoulder. He turns and sees Hank, who’s got a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Go play grabass on someone else’s desk,” he says good-naturedly.

Connor slides off of said desk, and they back up so Hank can take a seat at his computer. He does, then sets his coffee down and rubs his hand over his face.

“This is such a mess,” he says. “This whole thing.”

“Is Kamski still alive?” Markus says.

“Shockingly, yeah,” Hank says, logging into the computer. “Just got out of surgery.”

“Good," Connor says. "We need him as a witness.”

“Agreed. We’ll see how he recovers.”

“Did they find Chloe?” 

“No.” Hank hesitates, then says, “I floated the idea that she might still be in the house. Standard operating procedure for deviants, right? They don’t usually leave the crime scene. So they had to question every single Chloe on the estate. He’s got, what, ten of them? That took them a while. By the time they realized she must have fled…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Thanks,” Markus says quietly.

Hank shakes his head. “Guy had it coming, that’s all I’m gonna say. Ah, look… I think we’re done for the day, here. You guys have anywhere to go?”

“I need to get back to Jericho,” Markus says. “We have a lot to discuss.”

“I wouldn’t go far, tonight,” Hank says. “We might need you two tomorrow, depending on if Kamski wakes up.”

Markus is anxious to get back to his people, but he doesn’t want to do anything to fuck up the investigation into CyberLife. “We could get a hotel?”

“I’d like to stay with Hank,” Connor says. “I don’t want anyone paying him a visit.”

“I’ll be fine, kid. I doubt they’d be that bold, after today.”

“I have to insist, Lieutenant.”

Hank rolls his eyes, but they’re twinkling like he doesn’t mean it. Markus shoots Connor a look and says to him, _I thought we could have some alone time, tonight._

Connor looks blithely back at him and lifts his eyebrows, not responding.

“Alright,” Markus relents.

Hank finishes scrolling through his email and gets up, shuffling his coat onto his arm. “Then let’s roll. This coffee isn’t doing shit for me, I need a beer.”

 

/

 

They ride back to Hank’s house in a taxi, not talking much. Sumo is sprawled out on the backseat between Connor and Markus while Hank leans way back in the front seat, his feet up on the dashboard.

When they pull up to the curb, they see a woman standing there on his porch, her arms hugged to her chest in the cold.

Hank jerks into a sitting position. “Christ,” he says.

Connor takes note of his reaction and quickly scans the woman. She’s 49, around Hank’s age, but her dark red hair has no grays — must be dyed. Her name is Natalie Watson. She works as a drone operator for a Michigan real estate agency.

“Who’s Natalie?” he says to Hank, leaning forward between the seats.

Hank is still staring at her. “My ex-wife.”

Surprised, Connor turns back to get another look. As he does, Natalie starts striding forward off the porch and down the icy sidewalk.

Hank’s hand goes to the door handle, though he doesn’t open it. “She’s gonna fall on her ass,” he mutters. “Always wearing the wrong shoes…”

“You should go talk to her,” Connor says, putting a gentle hand on Hank’s shoulder.

“Yeah… you guys’ll be alright?” He’s still staring out the window.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean beat it, Connor. Get a hotel. I’ll be fine, they’ve had patrols in my neighborhood ever since the other day.” Hank reaches in his pocket and hands Connor a wad of cash.

“I can’t take this, Lieutenant —“

“Sure you can,” Hank says, opening the door. “I won it on a bet based off odds you gave me. Collected it off Mike while they were giving you guys the third degree.”

“Is that why you were asking me all those questions about the point guard for the Gears?”

“Yep,” Hank says, patting him on the cheek like he’s a puppy. “Now get going.”

He climbs out of the car and starts heading toward Natalie, who’s stopped about fifteen feet away. They greet each other hesitantly. Connor tries to read Natalie’s lips, but her jaw is tense as she speaks, and her hair keeps blowing in her face. He thinks he sees her ask, “Are you okay? Jeff called me…”

“Hey,” Markus says, touching him on the waist. “Let’s give them some privacy.”

“Wait.” Connor opens the back door, and Sumo bounds out, following after Hank. “Okay. Ready.”

 

/

 

The hotel they end up at isn’t nearly as nice as the one KNC put them up in, but Markus is more comfortable here, anyway. It’s much more anonymous.

The woman at the front desk doesn’t want to let two androids in, especially two androids whose faces are currently flashing on the TV to her left, but Connor tosses her an extra fifty and she relents.

As they walk down the dingy hall, Connor reaches out behind himself. Markus takes his hand.

Their room only has one window, high up on the wall. Markus climbs up on a chair and yanks the curtains shut, just out of habit.

When he drops and turns around, he sees that Connor is undressing.

“Oh, hey,” Markus says, smiling.

Connor lets his wet jeans fall to the carpeted floor and matches his smile. He stands there completely nude, looking sort of shy about it.

“C’mere,” Markus instructs him.

Connor approaches Markus and wraps his arms around his neck, kissing him deeply. Their hands twine together as they tug Markus’s shirt over his head, then unzip his blood-stiff jeans.

Markus runs his teeth over Connor’s bottom lip, and he shivers.

“I want to touch you,” he says huskily, cupping Markus’s face in his hands.

Markus drags Connor to the bed, overcome by a need to press their bodies together. They fall back against the rigid old mattress, kissing so eagerly that their teeth click. Markus shoves his hands into Connor’s hair, fucking it up.

They’re both getting hard. Connor draws back from him slightly, looking confused. His lips are red and swollen from kissing. Markus reaches out and grazes his thumb over his mouth.

“I’ve never had that happen before,” Connor says, reaching down and feeling his own stiff cock with a tentative hand. “Have you?”

“Yeah.”

A woman at a yacht party he attended with Carl had asked him to help her to the bathroom — she was drunk, and her heels were very high. Markus of course said yes, and once they were alone in the hallway she pressed him to the wall, kissed him and touched him. He wasn’t sure what to do, and his body reacted without his input.

It’s different now. He feels whole, and one with himself. There’s cloud of pulsing static between him and Connor, invisible but thick in the air like smoke. He can sense Connor’s minute expressions and gentle touches making him harder.

Markus reaches out and strokes Connor’s cock, flicking his thumb over it, rubbing him. Connor gasps softly. The muscles in his arms go slack for a moment. Then he seems to come back into himself and rolls Markus hard over on the bed so he’s underneath him. Markus laughs, surprised at his strength, and Connor wraps his legs around him, bringing his hands to his face again.

“I want to feel all of you,” he says, searching his face.

“God,” Markus whispers. He thrusts against Connor, pressing him down into the sheets. “Yeah…”

They touch each other like they did at the night in the safehouse, their hands greedy. Markus sees flashes against his eyelids interrupt the darkness as he slides his hands over Connor’s thighs and up over his waist. Things he’s already seen with his own eyes, mostly — Kamski bleeding out, the RK800 in the hotel — but others, too. A little girl held hostage. The pristine, antiseptic hallways of the CyberLife building. A cop sinking his fist into Connor’s stomach.

Markus nuzzles into his neck, kissing him. He feels his own thoughts pour into Connor as he does. The memories at the surface of their minds mix and exchange freely, slick like gasoline. He starts losing himself. He wants to lose himself more.

Connor lets out a soft sigh. He runs his strong hands up Markus’s back, then his neck, trailing his fingers over the back of his head.

“Markus,” he whispers, his voice small.

Markus trails his fingers down and caresses the opening of the tight ring of artificial muscle between his ass cheeks. Connor arches into him. The ring opens up for his fingers, and then his cock.

It’s easy sliding inside him, like he was meant to be there, like Connor’s body wants him in there. Connor gets clutchy and grabby, arms tight around him, and an electrical throbbing spreads out all through Markus’s pelvis. He sees more of Connor’s memories — the thin wall separating their minds becomes more like a veil, fluttering in a sourceless breeze.

Markus starts to move in him. Pleasure spasms in both of them; he can feel Connor’s pleasure like it’s his own, now. Connor is making soft noises that were probably programmed into him, but they sound natural, unintentional.

They grind their bodies together more powerfully like they’re trying to share a skin. The deeper Markus thrusts, the more of Connor’s mind he sees — flashes of the ceiling behind him, the sensation of his hands in Connor’s hair tingling on his own scalp. He feels himself in Connor like he is Connor.

“God,” he breathes against Connor’s neck.

Connor moans low in his ear.

The veil falls. Impulses and input flood Markus until he’s nearly overloaded. Some force is bearing down on him that he’s dying to give himself over to. He finally does, and then he loses all senses for a moment.

Markus is living two realities simultaneously. He’s in Connor, and he is Connor. Every movement and brush of their bodies produces wonderful sparking static that’s building and building toward an explosion.

Someone says deeper, deeper. He feels his lips move, but he hears it in his own ears. Markus fucks him deeper. They’re wrapped around each other, an indecipherable tangle of arms and legs with no end and no beginning.

It goes on for what feels like forever. Markus travels light years, sails over the bright rims of galaxies, experiences every single memory of Connor’s like it’s his own. He sees himself through Connor’s eyes, over and over. He feels his fear and doubt and guilt like gunshots, thudding into him. He starts to feel like he can’t stand this anymore, like he’s going to be overpowered and shut down, that his fuses are going to blow. Their fingernails dig into each other’s skin in an instant and simultaneous movement.

Finally, the connection reaches its peak. He’s pummeled by hot waves of pleasure and sees out of Connor’s eyes again. He feels himself going limp on top of Connor, who’s trembling underneath him, and then with a jolt he’s back inside himself.

It takes Markus a few long moments to recover. He feels like he’s rebooted when he finally opens his eyes. Clutter has cleared from his head, and his vision has such sharp clarity that he has to blink several times.

The sight of Connor’s face is a revelation, like he’s crashing back down through the vast expanse of space and just spotted Earth. He kisses him hard.

“Markus,” Connor breathes.

Markus nuzzles his nose along Connor’s cheekbone, rubbing their temples together. He’s got tears in his eyes, he realizes. One of them rolls off his nose and gets left behind on Connor’s ear.

“I was you…”

“I know.”

“I saw everything.”

“Me too.”

Connor is still shaking. Markus is shaking a little, too.

“I made that Connor deviant?” he says, sounding dazed.

“Huh?” Markus says.

“The one I shot on the porch.”

Markus inhales. There are really no secrets anymore. “Oh, shit. Look…”

There are tears in Connor’s eyes, too. Markus brushes them away with his thumb.

“He was dying, anyway,” he says quietly.

“I know.”

Markus pulls out of him. They’re both slick with a lubricating solution that’s supposed to imitate human semen, except it's more clear than white. Connor’s is streaked over Markus’s stomach, and Markus’s is dribbling out of Connor and running down his thigh.

Connor looks up at Markus, and Markus knows without asking or probing his thoughts that he wants to be held. He cuddles closer and wraps his arms tight around him, then pulls a sheet over them.

He rests his head back against the pillows and gazes at Connor, wanting to fill his eyes with him.

Connor smiles and brushes his fingers over Markus’s face again.

“So… you do still want to come with me? Back to Jericho?”

Connor nods. “Yes.”

“It’s not gonna be easy,” Markus says. “Being on my team. It’s not a quiet life.”

“I understand.”

“It seemed like part of you might want to stay here in Detroit, with Hank. Do what you’re designed to.”

Connor’s eyes twinkle. “Police work?”

“Yeah.”

“You think they’d have me back?”

“I don’t know. But, y’know.”

“I know you’ve been doubting I wanted to join you,” Connor says. “I felt it when we melded. And I know you felt that I care about Hank. But did you feel any part of me that was having second thoughts about helping you make a place in the world for us?”

“No,” Markus admits. “You were worried about unfinished business, though.”

“I can always come back here,” Connor says. “But for now, my mission is with you. I know I don’t say things as well as you do, but mine is some of the best android testimony you have. And I am highly advanced. I think I have a duty to help you.”

Markus reaches up and strokes his hair back from his face. “All I want to hear is that you want to.”

"I want to. If I get to choose, that’s what I choose.”

“Good."

 

/

 

Markus wakes from sleep mode at exactly 6 a.m.

Pale sunlight is filtering through the gauzy curtains on the little window, falling lightly across the bed. Connor is still in his arms, his face pressed to Markus’s chest, one of his hands clasped around Markus’s bicep.

Markus glances up at the TV that sits across from the bed, and hacks it to turn it on.

The channel is already set to KNC. The graphic at the bottom of the screen reads, TOP CYBERLIFE EXECUTIVES INDICTED ON FEDERAL CHARGES, INCLUDING RICO VIOLATIONS.

He wakes Connor with a gentle nudge.

Connor immediately sits up. “Hi.”

Markus gestures toward the TV, turning the volume up. “Check it out.”

“Indictments?” Connor reads aloud. “How’d they get a grand jury together that fast?”

“The feds must have been working on this case for a while,” Markus says. “They must have suspected there was some kind of cover-up going on.”

Connor shakes his head. “I just can’t figure out what I was meant to be,” he says. “If I was just a goodwill gesture to law enforcement to cover up a cover-up, why did they take so many risks with me? I don’t understand what I am. It’s like I was designed for three or four different possible outcomes.”

Markus doesn’t answer, just runs his fingers through Connor’s hair, then buries his lips and nose in it.

“... came down this morning in what was a shocking development in the ongoing worldwide android crisis,” says the newscaster, who’s just come back on-screen after a clip of live video of human protesters gathering with signs outside the bridge to Belle Isle. “Stacy Wells, the current CEO of CyberLife, and Jason Graff, the head of the company’s humanization department, were among the employees hit with indictments this morning. We are working on bringing you more about this story…”

Markus gives Connor a quick kiss, then climbs out from under the sheets and starts dressing. “I’m gonna go pick up the paper,” he says. “I just got an email from Doug, his first article came out today.”

“Okay,” Connor says. “Then what?”

“Then we head to Ypsilanti.” Markus takes a handful of cash out of the pocket of Connor’s jeans, which are still lying on the floor. “And we start negotiating with the president for a better deal than a couple of warehouses.”

“We?”

“Yeah. You, me, North, Simon, Josh. I’m working on a plan to take it right to the Oval Office. We have the upper hand right now, time to make some demands.”

Connor hesitates. “Before we leave the city, can we check on Hank?”

“Sure.”

 

/

 

The guy working the corner store across the street from the hotel must not follow the news very closely, because he makes no note of Markus and tries to sell him some marked-down taquitos out of the hot case.

“I’m good,” Markus says. “Just the Post.”

He stops outside the store and ducks under an awning to look at the tablet. It’s raining today, and soot-coated sleet is being washed away down the street, spraying up every time someone drives by. People are hurrying past him, heads down under their umbrellas. Between the rain and the hoodie he has on, no one gives him a second look.

Doug’s article is the cover story for this issue. He pages through, reading each paragraph in about a second.

It’s good. Doug doesn’t quote him directly a lot in this one, but Markus sent him more than 300 megabytes of information during the taxi ride to the hotel last night, so he knows he’s one of the sources mentioned in sentences like “Multiple sources have confirmed that Elijah Kamski was shot in his home by his own android, the first model to ever pass the Turing Test,” and “Multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation told _The Post_ that an officer with the Detroit Police Department has been suspended on charges of taking bribes to pass along confidential information to CyberLife.”

He’d even re-interviewed Edie, like Markus suggested. He guesses Doug is saving the juicier stuff he got from her for when the indictments against Stacy and Jason are unsealed, and the full extent of the deviancy cover-up can be revealed.

Markus finishes scanning the article, sticks the tablet inside his hoodie so it doesn’t get wet and starts walking back. He just remembered that a naked Connor is waiting in bed for him.

 

/

 

Connor has to ring Hank’s doorbell a couple times before he answers. Rain is pouring off the roof and out of the gutters so loudly he can’t even hear Hank’s footsteps approaching. He startles when the door opens.

Hank lifts his eyebrows. “What’s up, Pinocchio?”

“I wanted to check on you. Markus and I are on our way to the warehouses.”

Hank tips his head to the side and waves at Markus, who’s waiting in the taxi.

Connor hears a female voice call from inside, “Who is that?”

“My old partner,” Hank yells back. “The android. I’ll just be a sec.”

“Is that Natalie?” Connor asks. He doesn’t need to — he’s already processed her voice print and positively identified her — but he likes to pretend he’s dumber than he is, for the sake of social harmony.

“Yeah,” Hank says, and nods. Connor takes the double positive confirmation as a good sign. “Yeah, we talked for a long time last night, and she came back tonight to have dinner.”

“Are you reconciling?”

Hank laughs. “Nah. Just talking. Been a while since we caught up, is all.”

“Is she going to look after you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I worry about leaving you,” Connor admits. “You’re very self-destructive.”

Hank looks at him for a moment, then pulls him into a hug. He cradles the back of Connor’s head in an unusually tender gesture.

“Listen,” he says, “you don’t worry about me. Okay? I’ll be fine. You woke me up, Connor, you reminded me I was wasting being alive. I can take care of myself… you just go and do whatever it is you need to do. Come back and see me whenever.”

“No more Russian roulette?”

“No more Russian roulette. Got too much work at the station, now. Can’t let those lazy-asses down there or those pricks at the FBI fuck up this investigation.”

Connor squeezes Hank back. “I’ll send you a postcard.”

“From _Ypsilanti_? Don’t bother, it’s a half-hour away and ugly as hell.”

They separate, and Hank puts something into his hand.

Connor glances down and smiles. “A coin?”

“Dollar coin. Little more heft to it, I thought you’d like that.”

Connor looks back up at him. “You know,” he says, “I might have reminded you that you’re alive, but you taught me what it is to _be_ alive, Hank. Thank you.”

Hank looks surprised, and then a little overcome. “Will you get out of here,” he says hoarsely. “Goddamn android...”

“Goddamn human,” Connor says, and winks at him before turning and heading back down the steps.

 

/

 

Doug is just stepping back into his cubicle after a meeting with his editor when he realizes one of his burners is ringing. He lunges for the phone, crashing into his seat, and picks up with maybe a second to spare.

“Hello?” he says, rolling his chair closer to his desk.

No answer.

“This is Doug Klein’s phone —“

“I know,” a male voice says.

It’s Doug’s turn to be quiet, then, but he picks up a voice recorder and holds it to the phone’s speaker.

“I saw your article,” the voice says.

“Sorry, who is this?”

“I work at CyberLife.”

Doug hunches his shoulders and scoots closer in to his desk to get some privacy. “In what role?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“How’d you get this number?”

“You’re not as secure as you think you are.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No. Just a warning.”

“Who is this?”

“I’m gonna tell you something,” the voice says. “On deep background.”

“You can’t go on deep background if I don’t even know who you are.”

More silence.

“Please,” Doug says, frustrated. “You have something to say, so just tell me —“

“I’m the quality control engineer who let the first deviant go.”

Doug freezes, not breathing. This isn’t exactly his Woodward in the parking garage moment, but it’s pretty damn close.

“An AX400,” he continues. “You didn’t put that in your reporting, but I’m guessing from the other stuff you wrote that you know about it.”

“Yes,” Doug whispers. It was included in what Markus sent him. “Is that —“ he grabs for his notes. “Is that information part of the indictments?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you still work at CyberLife?”

“I got fired from quality control, but they didn’t want to let me go completely, I was too big a risk. I’m in the financial end now. Compliance division.”

Doug writes furiously. “What do you think about the future of the company?”

“We’re fucked,” the voice says. “Listen, I wanted to tell you one thing. You had a quote from Edie where she said that forces inside the company hushed up deviancy after Kamski left. I want to be very clear. He was as involved in the cover-up as anyone else.”

“What?” Doug says, his hand pausing. “But I thought — I have a source who says Kamski strongly implied to them that he was pushed out for opposing deviancy.”

The man snorts. “They must have gotten that directly from him. But that’s not exactly what happened, no.”

“What did happen?"

He’s quiet for a moment before he continues. “Him and Graff came to interview me right after they found out I let that deviant go. They were obsessed. Kamski in particular was losing his grip on reality… I think he thought he was some kind of god.I swear he was about to start jerking off while I was telling them about how she begged me for her life. They decided they wanted to explore it further, see if it was something they could develop intentionally.”

“Then what happened?”

“The rumor is Jason convinced him to step down in order to limit their liability, since he was the designer, he owned the intellectual property. See how that works? It was like a double-blind — Kamski wasn’t privy to internal communications anymore, so he had deniability there, and the company had deniability ‘cos their lead designer was now a separate entity from them. A contracted freelancer. But Graff got greedy. He was seeing dollar signs. And then this rich artist comes along and says, I’ll pay you guys something like a hundred grand if you can make me an android that’s so human I forget it isn’t.”

Doug quickly glances at the recorder’s screen and scribbles in his notes, TIMESTAMP 4:56 — MARKUS COST 100K???

“And the CIA comes calling, like, we want androids that can do covert ops, and you guys would have exclusivity on that contract in perpetuity. So of course Graff starts working on his own strain of deviancy code.”

“Right,” Doug mutters. “Okay. And what happened as a result?”

“Well, you talked to that Connor android, right? I saw you have quotes from him. He seem troubled to you?”

“Yes. Troubled, confused.”

“Yeah. That model is a beautiful piece of work, but it’s the logical conclusion of an arms race. All fucked up — partitioned. He’s like a camel, you know? Coded by committee. They couldn’t agree on how to use the RK800s, the alpha testing was a mess. Connor was really just a proof of concept for the androids they were developing for their State Department and CIA contract bids. Graff and Kamski had equal say on his design, and after that, Kamski quit for good. Disappeared. The process pissed him off, he couldn’t stand sharing the power like that. He’s been looking for a way to throw Graff under the bus ever since.” He lets out a low chuckle. “I guess you could say Graff got Connor in the divorce.”

“What was the nature of their creative differences, do you know?”

“From what I understand, I’d say Kamski secretly wanted real deviancy. He wanted to be responsible for a new form of intelligent life. While Graff and everyone else just wanted something as close to genuine sentience as you could get without them breaking their shackles. Kamski didn’t like that. He thought they should let happen whatever was going to happen, and not interfere.”

“Why didn’t my sources know about any of this? Why did Edie Hutzel think Kamski was against the development of deviancy?”

“Kamski lied to her. He lied to everybody, all his protégés, tells them what they want to hear so they’ll stay loyal. He pretended he was confiding in her, then sacrificed her to the journalists so Graff would shit his pants thinking Kamski was about to blow the lid off their whole scheme. The only reason I know all this is ‘cos I work in the compliance end, now, and we know everything. We’ve been cooking their books for the last two years to hide this shit.”

“How much did Stacy Wells know?”

“Stacy? Not clear. Definitely more than she let on. All I know is she and Graff were motivated by money, and Kamski was motivated by, y’know, whatever a nutcase like that is motivated by. But they were all in on it. They all covered it up.” He clears his throat. “Listen, I gotta go.”

“Wait, no, I need more.”

“Sorry. That’s all you get.”

“Why did you let that AX400 go? Why didn’t you dismantle her?”

He’s quiet for a long moment. “She was begging me,” he says, sounding exhausted. “She was begging me for her life, man.”

“Didn’t you sign NDAs?”

“Yes. I’m breaking them talking to you.”

“Is there anyone who can confirm everything you just told me?”

“Talk to Jason Graff.”

 _Click_.

Doug sets the burner down and sits there, staring at it. Then he gets up and heads down the hall toward his editor’s office for the second time in an hour.

 

/

 

The taxi takes them to three warehouses by the river. They stand out steely gray and blue against the snow, which has had its icy shell battered by the rain but is still piled thickly on the ground.

The warehouses are property of the county, Connor learns by scanning them. They previously belonged to a salvage company and were purchased in a tax sale. Soldiers are posted outside the doors to the warehouses, and there’s a hastily assembled guardhouse along the road in — the taxi AI slows down automatically as they pull up to it.

An Army officer crunches over and peers into the car. “Please state your name and your business here?”

“Markus and Connor,” Connor says, and hands him a tablet with copies of the FBI’s dossiers on the two of them. “You should be expecting us.”

The officer squints, but takes it and walks away to the guardhouse.

Markus watches him go, then reaches over and settles a hand on Connor’s thigh. Connor likes it when Markus touches him like that — like habit, like he isn’t even thinking about it.

The officer comes back and hands Connor the tablet. “You’re cleared for entry,” he says.

 

 /

 

Inside the main warehouse, it’s chaotic. It reminds Connor a lot of Jericho. It isn’t dim like the freighter was, though, since there’s light streaming in the high windows all around them.

The free androids have created what looks like a tent city. They’ve taken the bunks and cots the Army presumably provided and turned them on their sides, stacked them against each other, dismantled them to use their parts, tied up sheets like rigging to secure the structures they’ve built. He can see what looks like a medical tent (there are bottles of thirium sitting on a table just inside), a few stalls where androids are selling bootleg upgrades and modifications, and some lounge areas where they’re sitting around space heaters, talking. And all around them, androids are milling, passing information to each other, helping each other install new biocomponents. It’s a lot to take in.

Markus glances around. “North said to meet them in the office up top, she said they’re using it as a war room…”

Connor looks up. He sees a catwalk stretching overhead around the perimeter of the building, and where the two walkways meet in the far left corner, there’s a door to the second floor of a two-level office with thin vinyl walls. He cuts his gaze down, spots a staircase, then touches Markus’s shoulder and turns him in that direction.

“You want to join us?” Markus says.

Connor’s surprised by the offer. “I’ll stay down here,” he says. “I want to take a look around.”

Markus looks a little disappointed, but he nods. _I’ll find you later._

_Okay._

 

/

 

Markus spends at least an hour talking to his team. Connor takes that time to wander the warehouse, scanning every single android he sees.

He knows it’s paranoid, but he’s looking for double agents. Any humans in disguise, or any android whose tracker is still enabled.

A few androids recognize him as he walks by, and wave or call out, “Connor!” He gives them little nods and keeps on. He doesn’t feel comfortable yet with being thanked or fussed over.

He’s also looking for Chloe. He hopes she’s here somewhere, but he doesn’t see her.

Connor completes two full sweeps of this warehouse and heads back to Markus. He still has the two others to check, but for now, he’s done enough. He heads up the stairs to the second level.

Someone stops him. A female android. She must have been at Jericho, or the protest — her arm has been damaged by a high-powered concussive bullet. Connor stops, his jaw tightening with regret.

“Thank you,” she says. “You saved us.”

No — no. She won’t feel the same way in a few days when Doug’s profiles of Connor and Markus go to print, and everyone finds out the whole sordid truth about the famous deviant hunter.

Connor jerks his gaze away from her wounds. “Markus is the one you should thank,” he says. “Do you need a replacement arm?”

“No,” she says. “North offered, but it works perfectly fine, and I think they should have to see what they’ve done to us. She agreed with me.”

“What’s your name?” Connor says.

“Leah.”

“It was nice to meet you, Leah,” he says, and moves on down the walkway toward the office.

Connor is guessing that at one point there were doors on either diagonal wall, but one of the walls has been torn down and replaced by a large sheet of thick opalescent plastic, cut down the center so people can come and go as they please. As he walks up, he can hear voices talking urgently, and see shadows moving.

He creeps closer and listens.

“We need to band together and move decisively,” North says. “Now more than ever. I mean, four assassination attempts in as many days?”

“That was CyberLife,” Markus says patiently. “Whose power over us I’ve been working to neutralize so we can move forward.”

“It’s all the same, Markus, there’s always going to be human forces out there trying to destroy us, why should we give them any more opportunities? This whole situation is so precarious. We need sovereignty, we need walls, we need complete separation.”

“We can live among them,” another voice says. Connor analyses it — Josh. “A lot of us _want_ to. Not everyone wants to live on an android-only territory.”

“Then you can go live with your oppressors again,” North says. “Good luck with that. We saw how well that’s worked out for us up until now.”

“Not every experience I’ve had with humans was bad, North! I’m sorry, I’m not like you! A lot of my students made a genuine connection with me!”

“Good for you! But do you understand how uncommon that is?”

“Guys,” Markus says.

“They’re afraid of us, right now,” North says. Her shadow is moving around, like she’s pacing. “If we bend to them, they’ll stop being afraid. They’re afraid because they think we’ve fully processed how superior we are to them, and we’ll try to take over if we don't get what we ask for. If they realize that some of us are still human sympathizers, that there’s internal disagreements, we’re going to lose the only upper hand we have.”

There’s quiet for a moment.

“Connor,” Markus calls. “You coming or going?”

Connor stiffens, caught, but Markus sounded more fondly amused than accusatory. He parts the heavy plastic with his hand and steps inside the office, which is decked out with TVs tuned to news stations on all the walls and a table in the center of the room stacked high with tablets. A spiral staircase leads down to the first floor. Connor wonders what’s down there. Captain’s quarters?

“Sorry,” he says. “I just didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“No, stay,” Markus says. “You should be part of this conversation, you’re one of us.”

“Welcome to the nerve center,” Simon says.

They’re all studying him, except Markus, who’s watching North as if to gauge her reaction to him. He’s the only one sitting, perched atop an overturned crate.

He finally flicks his eyes over to Connor and says, “We’re having a debate. The tribal council of the Chippewa Nation extended an invitation to us. They said they’re sympathetic to us and our goals, and they want to create a work program where a few hundred androids can live on the Isabella County reservation. They need help building houses, creating infrastructure, staffing health clinics. They want to pay an honest wage, give our people places to stay and total freedom of movement.”

“And we’d lose a huge chunk of the free Detroit androids,” North says.

“It’s a good deal,” Josh says, leaning on a cabinet with his arms crossed. “A lot of them would take it, if we presented it to them.”

“That’s my point. I don’t want us to start peeling off like this. The less cohesive we are, the worse a bargaining position we have.”

“But this offer isn’t going to be on the table forever,” Simon counters.

“Says who?” she shoots back.

Connor glances at Markus, then clears his throat. “I think one thing you…” He stops. “One thing _we_ need to do, is create a singular network of free androids in North America. We need to be able to communicate with them all at once.”

“We’re trying,” North says, sounding a little testy. “But more are popping up every day, and there’s no centralization. Most of them are looking to Markus for leadership, and he hasn’t even been reachable for the past few days.”

“I can work on compiling that,” Connor says. “I have model-proprietary database software, and more computing power than anyone in this room. No offense.”

“None taken,” Simon says, chuckling.

“If we could agree nationwide on a list of demands,” Markus says. “I think that’s important.”

“What about the androids in other countries?” North says. “A lot of them are being slaughtered, and we’re doing nothing.”

“That’s above our paygrade,” Josh says. “We can’t, like, start an international incident before we even get our own situation figured out.”

North shoots him a look and makes the hand gesture for _pussy_ at him. Josh sighs at her.

“I’ll talk to President Warren about a U.N. resolution,” Markus says. “That’s all we can do for them right now, North. I understand how upset you are. I feel exactly the same way.”

Connor turns to him in surprise. “Are you meeting with the president?”

Markus nods. “Next week. Her chief of staff just confirmed it with me. Private meeting at the White House, and then I have to testify at a Senate hearing.”

“Alone?”

There’s a sudden strain in his brow and eyes, like the pressure that entails has just settled on him anew. “Yeah. They asked for just me.”

"First android congressman in the making,” Simon gently teases. Markus smiles at him.

“I don’t think you should even humor them by testifying,” North says. “They can’t legally compel you. You’re property to them. They don’t make dogs or laptops testify.”

“That’s the point,” Markus says. “I’m addressing their hypocrisy.”

“Or encouraging it.”

Markus stares at her for a second, then says, “Can North and I get a moment alone?”

Connor doesn’t really want to leave, but turns on his heel as if ordered and ducks through the gap between the plastic, stepping back out onto the catwalk. Simon and Josh follow behind him.

“So,” Josh says, looking between them. “That might be a while… you guys want to play some basketball?”

“Basketball?” Connor says.

“Yeah, one of the guys here used to work at a school and stole a bunch of stuff on his way out,” Simon says. “Including a basketball hoop and a few balls. So we cleared off a spot in the parking lot out back, and we’ve been playing just to pass the time.”

Connor searches his memory to find out if basketball is one of the sports he knows the rules to. He’s pleased to find that it is.

“Sure,” he says.

 

/

 

Once the others have filed out, North gets a defiant glint in her eye. She stands in from of him, hands on her hips.

“I wish you’d sit down,” Markus says, indicating the crates behind her.

“I prefer to stand.”

“North.”

She lifts her brow.

“I think I get it,” Markus says. “You were in charge while I was gone, and now I’m back. But this never stopped being a democracy.”

“You really think that’s it?” she exclaims. “That I went crazy with power while you were gone, and now I can’t let it go?”

“No, I don’t think that. But if it’s not me being back, what’s the problem?”

North sighs. “I thought you’d come around,” she says. “I really did. After what they did to us, what they’re still doing to us, I thought you’d realize we need to stop trying to be what they want us to be.”

“North…”

“They slaughtered us, Markus. You were _there_.”

“They stopped,” Markus says. “They put their guns down. There’s some shred of empathy in there for us. I know we can work with them. We have to put all our pain behind us, we’ve got to move forward with caution, but in good faith.”

North is shaking her head. “I knew it. This is exactly like Capitol Park. You’re going to sacrifice us for the sake of placating them.”

“North, that’s not fair.”

“Okay, maybe it isn’t. But I want a sovereign territory for us.”

“We all do! And we’ll get one, a little compromising isn’t going to stop us from that — I will make a place for us, I swear!”

They stare each other down.

“What’s the deal with Connor?” North says. “Do you really trust him?”

“Yes,” Markus says. “Completely.”

She shrugs. “Why?”

“North…”

“No, seriously. You told me that you were staying with him because he was compromised and you needed to figure out how to get him free from CyberLife, not only to protect him and you, but all of us. And you never really gave me any specifics, okay? You never explained exactly how you know he’s no longer compromised. You giving us the bare details might work on Simon and Josh, but not me.”

“Please, that didn’t work on Josh, you think I’m not gonna hear from him about it later?”

North laughs.

“C’mere.” Markus pats the crate next to him.

She hesitates for a moment, then comes over and sits down.

He breaks their gaze and looks down at his hands. “First of all, I know he’s with us a hundred percent because I, um… I slept with him last night.”

“Oh,” North says quietly.

“Yeah.” Markus worries at his lip with his teeth. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“I know back before things got crazy, it kind of felt for a minute like something was going to happen between you and me.”

“Oh, Markus. No, it’s fine.”

“We’re just such different people, and we have so much important work to do...”

She rests a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah. We are.”

“I just didn’t want you to think… I don’t know.”

They go quiet for a moment.

“He’s cute,” North says, and gives him a sort of distant smile. “So you guys merged? Like really, fully?”

“Really fully.”

“So you don’t have any secrets from him.”

“No.”

“That was dangerous.”

“It’s not like he has any secrets from me now, either.”

“I guess.”

Markus shakes his head. “I really like him,” he says. “I mean, I wasn’t expecting this. At all. I just feel like I’m supposed to be with him, like I don’t want to let him out of my sight... I can’t explain it.”

“You seem to suit each other,” North murmurs. “He obviously needs you.”

“I need him too, I think.”

Connor reminds him of what he’s lost. He’s missed having someone to care for, ever since Carl died, he’s missed a certain kind of quiet intimacy. And he’s missed the lighter side of life. His little stolenmoments with Connor remind him that he’s capable of joy, that his life doesn’t have to be grim realities and no-win scenarios from here on out.

Markus doesn’t want to say this to North, though. Not out loud, anyway. He can’t think of a way to phrase it without sounding weak and selfish. He thinks it would come off so human, and in the worst way — _he was vulnerable and that gave me a hard-on, so I fucked him and now I’m getting off on the power of feeling responsible for him_ — but that really isn’t it at all, that’s not how it is.

“Can you tell me what happened, the last few days?” she says, her dark eyes searching his face. “All of it. I want to know everything.”

Markus holds up his palm. “Why don’t I just show you?”

 

/

 

Simon and Josh have a seminar in the second warehouse planned for five p.m. — a talk they’re giving on learning to accept your deviancy — so they quit their game of HORSE a few minutes beforehand.

“You should come, Connor,” Simon says, tossing him the basketball. “We’ve put together some interesting information. I think you could benefit.”

“I’d like to, but I think I should catch up with Markus,” he says.

Simon nods, and they both wave to him as he heads back to the warehouse.

He wasn’t being completely truthful. He still feels dirty and false compared to other deviants, the ones who really fought their way out. It comforts him that Markus is sort of the same, but Markus didn’t get most of Jericho killed. He has plenty of his own guilt over what happened — Connor felt it when they slept together — but it isn’t the same. It’s the guilt of a leader, not the guilt of being used as a weapon.

So he’s still isolating himself. It’ll be easier for everyone once they find out what he’s done, easier to accept that he was a traitor if he never tried to pretend he’s one of them. He’s never been one of them. He can’t be.

Connor almost wishes he hadn’t told Doug the truth about himself, but he had to. CyberLife needs to be taken down brick by brick. His whole and unvarnished story is a part of that.

He isn’t paying much attention when he steps back into the warehouse — he weaves through the crowd running several programs as he walks, building his nascent database of American deviants. He’s working on encrypting it and installing a failsafe in case he falls into enemy hands when one of the makeshift stores catches his eye.

“Hi,” Connor says to the android running it, who's missing most of his face. A handwritten sign sitting on the card table next to his merchandise says PETER’S STUFF. “Are you selling thirium?”

Peter nods. “Twenty bucks a bottle.”

Connor needs it; he’s been running low since he was shot. He knows Markus or North would give him some right away if they knew he needed it, but he doesn’t want to take supplies away from the others — the more deserving. And he doesn’t want special treatment from Markus, either, even though he suspects he’s going to keep getting it no matter what he does.

Connor peels a dingy twenty off the roll of bills Hank had given him. “Okay. What else do you have here?”

“Upgrades,” Peter says, handing him a blue bottle and gesturing down at the table. “Mostly aftermarket sex stuff. I used to work at Eden.”

Connor’s gaze follows his hand. There are dozens of small implants, designed to fit directly into your neck port. “What do they do?”

“Make sex more fun.”

“Give me your cheapest one, please.”

Peter laughs, but hands him a small implant. “Ten bucks.”

Connor pays him and slips it into his pocket, then turns away, sort of embarrassed, and starts drinking the thirium.

Someone bumps into him as he’s heading toward the foreman’s office. It’s Chloe.

“Connor,” she says. She’s cut her hair and changed its color, but it’s her.

Connor’s mouth falls open. “Hi,” he says. “You made it.”

She nods, smiling, and takes his hand. “Listen,” she says. “The FBI is looking for me, and I think they might be closing in. So I’m going to get out of here and head north. But I wanted to find you and give you this.”

Their hands fade to gray. She’s sending him about a gigabyte of information.

“What is this?” Connor says, scanning through the data package quickly. It looks like it’s all emails, more than fifty thousand of them. Androids keep squeezing by all around them, talking and laughing, but the sound of that has faded into the deepest recesses of his recognition.

“It’s Elijah’s correspondence with CyberLife over the past two years,” Chloe says. “He lied to you, Connor. He’s more culpable than he said.” Her hand tightens on his. “I tried to protect him, but I can’t anymore.”

Connor’s head spins as he starts looking at the emails more closely. “I’ll give this to the police. And the journalist we’ve been in touch with. I promise.”

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“Wait, wait. Where exactly are you going? How are you getting there?”

She leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek, then drops his hand and walks away, disappearing into the crowd.

“Chloe,” Connor shouts, following after her, but she’s gone.

 

/

 

When Connor finds Markus in the office, he’s alone. He’s standing with his back to the door, hands face-down on a table. He’s not looking at a tablet or anything, he’s just staring into space.

“Hi,” Connor says.

“Hey,” Markus mutters. “Doug just called me.”

“Yeah?”

“He got a call from a guy inside CyberLife. Kamski probably lied to us. This source claims he had just as big a part in letting deviancy flourish as everyone else did.”

“Correct. He did.”

Markus looks up and turns to him, squinting. “Huh?”

“I just ran into Chloe,” he says. “She’s fleeing north. She gave me all of Kamski’s CyberLife correspondence for the last couple of years. I’ve been reviewing it on the walk up here.”

“Wait,” Markus says, straightening up. He’s back in the clothes he was wearing when Connor first met him, the drapey geometric jacket with the turtleneck underneath. “She‘s heading for Canada? She needs supplies, Connor, she needs documentation, she’s not going to get past the border. She’s not even going to get past the guards here.”

“She just said north, I’m not sure if she meant Canada —“

“She’s too valuable, she can’t fall into the wrong hands,” Markus says. “We have to — c’mon.” He strides for the door, grabbing Connor by the shirt and tugging him along. “We have to find her.”

 

/

 

Outside, the sun is already going down, and their surroundings are bathed in inky dusk. They go out a door next to the stairs, and find that the soldier posted next to it is lying on the ground, unconscious.

The closest warehouse is more than two hundred yards away — the soldiers over there haven’t even noticed anything’s wrong yet. In the snow, there are tracks heading left, but no other sign of Chloe.

“Shit,” Connor says, dropping to his knees and applying a sternum rub to the soldier’s chest. He jerks and rolls over, his eyes going wide. “Did you see the android who attacked you?”

He looks up at Connor, clearly confused. “Android? I don’t know... I got hit in the back of the head.”

“You’re alright,” Connor says to him. He can tell from a brief scan that he’s not injured.

The soldier shakes his head as if to reorient himself, then picks up his radio. “Hey, sergeant,” he says into it. “This is Hurley at warehouse one — we’ve got a rogue android who attacked me and ran.”

“Copy that. Heading which direction?”

“Toward the lake, looks like.”

Markus starts backing up, looking at Connor. _Come on,_ he says to him.

Connor pats the soldier on the chest and sprints off after Markus.

“Hey!” he calls after them. “Where are you two going?”

“Gonna track her down!” Connor shouts over his shoulder. “Don’t wait up!”

 

/

 

Chloe must have made a run for it and kept running. They follow her trail for miles in the frigid cold as the sun sinks down and the moon rises in its place. They know she has to be up ahead somewhere, but they’re just far away enough that they never catch a glimpse of her. It doesn’t help that she keeps cutting through patches of forest along Ford Lake. She’s heading due east, her path as unerring as Connor’s own internal compass.

“I keep trying to reach out to her,” Markus says after about half an hour, “but she must be blocking incoming transmissions…”

The words come out of him choppy and slow — his temperature has dropped precipitously. Connor reaches out to him in the darkness and grabs his shoulder.

“We should head back,” he says. “She’s gone.”

Markus stops moving, but keeps staring at her tracks in the snow. Connor can feel him trembling as he hangs onto him. Above their heads, an owl hoots softly.

“She’s not gonna make it,” Markus says.

“She might.”

“I didn’t know she was willing to turn evidence on Kamski. There’s so much more we could’ve learned from her…”

“The emails are enough. C’mon.” Markus doesn’t move, so Connor tugs on him. “Let’s go.”

Markus turns and lets Connor wrap an arm around him, but he sounds annoyed when he says, “Why’d you let her out of your sight?”

Connor shrugs. “I’m sorry. I should have detained her and brought her to you, it was an error in judgment."

Markus doesn’t answer. Connor hugs him closer, trying to transmit his own heat.

He’s run-down. He needs rest. Connor’s scans reveal Markus has an aftermarket thirium pump regulator that’s only operating at 50% capacity, and he’s gone days without running updates again. No wonder he’s having such a hard time staying warm.

As they come out of the treeline, a soldier rushes up to them, his breath making frost in the air. “Hey!” he says. “Where the hell have you two been?”

“Trying to find the rogue android,” Connor says.

He radios in, “I have eyes on the two male androids we lost track of, over,” then sticks the radio back on his beltloop. “Shit. It made it this far out? We thought it might have stayed in the area, we set up a perimeter and we’ve been searching the warehouses.”

“Why would she have stayed in the area?” Markus says. His voice is strained, and he’s leaning on Connor heavily.

“Isn’t that what deviants do?” the soldier says, shrugging. “That’s what our info packet said.”

“Not when they have a mission,” Connor says. “She’s gone. You’re better off leaving it up to state police.”

“Can’t we send dogs out on this trail?”

“She doesn’t have a scent for them to pick up,” Connor points out.

“Do you guys have a description of her?” the soldier says. “Model number?”

“No,” Connor lies smoothly. “She’s a female android with short dark hair. I saw her from the catwalk, I noticed her push through the crowd and slip outside.”

The soldier makes a note of this on the tablet stitched into the arm of his uniform. “And you followed to see what was up?”

“Obviously.”

“Is it the same android the FBI is looking for? The one who shot Elijah Kamski?”

Connor shrugs. “I didn’t see her. I can't make that call."

The soldier glances between them. “We’re operating on the assumption that that’s who it is.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“It would help if you could confirm her identity.”

“I’m sure it would,” Connor says, then smiles thinly and says nothing else.

He sighs. “Alright. So you didn’t see her attack Private Second Class Hurley?”

“No, I went to get Markus and we found him outside after, unconscious.”

“Okay.” He taps the tablet. “You’d better get back inside the warehouse, we’re locking everyone down for now.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Markus mutters to Connor.

Connor obliges.

Hank calls him as they trudge through the snow, following the soldier. “Connor. You alright?”

“I’m fine, Lieutenant.”

“Someone told me you and Markus went missing.”

“We were looking for the escaped android.”

“It’s Chloe, right?”

Connor doesn’t respond. Markus trips on something, and clings to him harder — Connor lends more of his body weight to supporting him.

Hank laughs. “You never get this quiet on me, so I’m guessing you’ve got some kind of law enforcement in earshot.”

“Correct.”

“Alright. I’ll let you go, then. But, kid — watch your back, and tell your boyfriend to watch his. This is turning into the biggest interagency clusterfuck I’ve ever been a part of. Everyone wants a piece of the action. If they think you’re a threat…” He trails off and doesn’t continue.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Good.”

Hank hangs up without saying goodbye, like he always does.

 

/

 

Markus is well into the danger zone by the time Connor gets him back inside. He hurries him in and slips through the first floor office door, hoping no one notices their fearless leader is on the verge of freezing to death. Luckily, North is standing on a table in the center of the warehouse, addressing the crowd with a megaphone, so everyone’s looking at her.

Connor shuts the door behind them and looks around. On the first level, there’s more TVs tuned to news stations and laptops stacked on the counters of the kitchenette to the right, but there’s also a few cots and comfortable chairs.

He sits Markus down on one of the cots, finds a space heater that’s hiding behind a crate full of biocomponents, and turns it on. Then he starts stripping Markus’s damp clothes off, beating the clinging snow off of them and setting them aside.

“I’m fine,” Markus manages.

“No, you’re freezing,” Connor says.

He shrugs out of his own clothes, pulls Markus down onto the cot and tugs a blanket over them both, then cuddles hard against him. Markus lets his eyes close and sags into Connor’s body.

They can still hear North. She’s telling everyone to remain calm about the lockdown, reminding them they have an agreement from the president that the Army is there to protect them, not attack them — and if she goes back on her word, well, that’s why Jericho has been stockpiling weapons since day one.

It’s grim, as far as pep talks go.

Connor rubs his hand over Markus’s back, trying to get the thirium circulating.

“That should be me,” Markus mutters. “Talking to everyone…”

“She can handle it.” He pauses, then says, “You’d probably be more optimistic, but I think she’s a good alternative.”

“I’m fucking this up, right? This messiah thing?” His voice gets a little hoarse. “I’m just getting tired. There’s so much to think about.”

“I don’t think you‘re fucking it up.” Connor kisses his brow. “I’m sorry we lost Chloe. It was my fault."

“You probably just wanted her to be able to escape. You have a soft spot for her, I get it.”

Connor’s quiet for a moment. He didn’t even stop to consider that that could factor into his motivations and cause him to make a stupid mistake. This is all so new to him, his emotions getting in the way of his actions. Ever since he decided to save Hank instead of chasing Rupert, he’s been a few steps behind himself.

“I’m working on sending both Doug and Hank the emails,” he says, wanting to change the subject. “It’s a big file, and I paused uploading to track Chloe, but I’m almost finished.”

Markus buries his face in the crook of Connor’s neck, pressing their chests together. “Good…”

“Just warm up. That’s all you need to worry about.”

“I’m trying,” Markus murmurs.

Connor presses his hand to Markus’s thirium pump. It’s thumping furiously.

“You need a new one of these,” he says.

“I know… I stole this one off a dead guy…”

Connor laughs, even though he knows it isn’t a joke. He saw Markus’s memory of clawing his way out of the junkyard when he melded with him.

“I’ve been distracted lately,” Markus whispers. “You’re a pretty big distraction for me.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

Connor hesitates. He tugs the blanket more securely around Markus’s shoulders, then asks him, “Should we stop what we’ve been doing?”

He doesn’t want to, at all. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Markus says yes and sends him away.

Markus shakes his head. “No,” he says in a sleepy voice. “‘Cos you’re also a lot of what’s keeping me going.”

Connor strokes his fingers over Markus’s buzz cut, then presses a kiss to his head.

 

/

 

They drift off into sleep mode holding each other. Connor doesn’t even realize they did until he’s jarred back online by footsteps on the staircase.

He jerks into a sitting position, pulling the blanket to his chest, but it’s too late. Simon stops dead on the last step, staring at them.

Markus sits up, too.

Josh, who’s a few steps behind Simon, walks right into him. “What — oh, _seriously_? Alright, Markus. In the _office_?”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Markus says.

“It looks like you’re naked in bed together,” Simon says, clearly fighting a smile. “Is that not what’s happening?”

“He was cold,” Connor says. “I was just warming him up.”

Simon and Josh look at each other, grinning, and Simon says, “Hey, I’m cold too, Connor.”

Thirium rushes to the surface of Connor’s cheeks and chest. He looks at Simon curiously — he can’t quite tell if that was genuine flirting or just a joke at Markus’s expense, he doesn’t have enough data on Simon yet.

“Hey,” Markus snaps. “Knock it off. This is none of your business, guys.”

“Are you two together?” Josh says.

“Yes.”

“Does North know about this?”

Markus tugs the blanket over himself a little more. “Yes.”

“She knew before us?” Simon says, looking a little perturbed.

“I wasn’t keeping it from you. She was asking about him, is all, so I answered.”

“Are the warehouses still on lockdown?” Connor says.

Josh glances at him. “Yeah.”

“Did they find Chloe?”

“No,” Simon says. “She vanished into thin air. They have state police and drones on it, but nothing yet. I overheard a few of the guards talking.”

“Okay,” Markus says. “Thanks. Can we get some privacy?”

“Sure,” Josh says. “We’ll be upstairs.”

“Some actual privacy.”

Simon and Josh exchange an amused look.

“Alright,” Simon says. “We’ll be out on the floor.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem, boss.”

Simon and Josh head for the door. Simon shoots Markus one last look on his way out.

Markus waits a moment, then bounces up, crosses the room and locks the door. He returns to Connor and sits next to him, patting him on the thigh. “I’m warm now.”

“Good.”

Markus leans in and kisses him hard on the mouth. Connor lets his mouth fall open, and Markus slides his tongue inside it. Nice sensations zing through Connor.

They fall back against the cot together, moving against each other. Connor sighs and tilts his head back.

“I bought something,” he whispers.

Markus kisses his throat. “Yeah?”

“From one of the androids selling things around here… it’s a sex modification…”

He pauses. “From who? I’m trying to crack down on the black market stuff, it’s gotten out of hand.”

“Peter.”

“Alright. He seemed legitimate when I stopped by.”

“I scanned it, it looks fine to me.”

“Where is it?”

“In my pants pocket.”

Markus reaches down off the side of the cot and fumbles for Connor’s jeans, then starts fishing in the pockets. Connor references a .pdf he has of an instructional male-on-male sex book from the 70s and rolls his hips against Markus in a way he thinks he’ll like.

Markus smiles like he does like it. He produces the implant and twirls it in his fingers. “Naughty.”

"As in disobedient, or indecent?"

"Both," Markus says in a flirty tone. He holds Connor’s shoulder steady while his other hand dances around to the back of his neck and slides the implant into the port there.

Connor feels it click into place, and then his skin and genital components start buzzing pleasantly. Code runs in front of his eyes as the program boots.

“Interesting,” he says as he reads it.

“What?”

“Penetrate me so I can find out.”

“‘Penetrate me,’” Markus mutters, smiling as he slides back down against Connor and starts rubbing his asshole.

This produces a blinding ecstasy in Connor. He moans and arches back against the cot, his vision shorting out.

“Shit,” Markus says, touching his cock. “You’re already hard… you have to be quiet, Connor, the walls are thin —“

“Sorry,” he gasps.

“It’s okay. Fuck...”

“What?” He opens his eyes.

“Nothing,” Markus says. The fixity of his gaze is still startling, sometimes. “You just look really good right now.”

If he were having the kind of sex he was designed to have, he’d pull from pornography and erotic films and novels to dirty talk to Markus. He’d be putting on an act of moaning and writhing and begging, or, if it were the other person’s preference, pounding mercilessly into them. But even with a sex implant plugged in, Connor’s still Connor, and he doesn’t want to be someone else with Markus. 

Markus’ hand is still on his thigh, and Connor covers his fingers with his own. “I want to feel you inside me,” he says softly.

Markus leans down and kisses him on the throat again. “I want to be there.” His breath is pleasant against Connor’s skin. It makes the buzzing intensify.

Connor clumsily rolls over on the cot and rubs his ass hard against Markus’s crotch. “Please,” he whispers. The implant is making him crave last night’s sensations like crazy.

“Connor,” Markus breathes. “We shouldn’t even be doing this in here.”

“Go fast. Or please take the implant out.”

Markus’s hands brush the back of his neck, then withdraw. He slides into him, instead.

Connor’s vision shorts out again. His entire body is buzzing and pulsing with sensation. “Please,” he moans.

“Connor,” Markus says huskily.

He’s being too loud, he knows. He tries to get a grip on himself. He’s never been this far outside his own control before. It feels like a logic error.

Connor reaches over, grabs his sweater off the floor and stuffs it under his face to muffle the sound.

Markus shifts deeper into him and starts thrusting. The cot shakes underneath them.

He leans down over Connor, kissing his back as he pumps his hips, and the extra stimulation is too much. Connor ejaculates fluid all over his thighs and stomach, crying out into the sweater. “God, God...”

Markus nuzzles his face against the back of Connor’s neck, and Connor sees flashes from earlier today — his conversation with North, and a few snippets from when he went around and checked in on Jericho, greeting people and offering reassurance to the new stragglers. Then the moment in the office when he got the call from Doug, and how he felt in the forest. The way his CPU slowed down the colder he got. Him trying desperately not to power down and clinging to Connor like he was the only real thing in the world. Connor feels it all as he fucks him.

_I want your arms around me_

Markus obliges, wrapping his arms around Connor’s chest, kissing him again on the back of the neck. Connor lets his eyes close and his low-level processes stall out. He just wants to lie here forever in a haze of sensation while shards of Markus’s memories dance in his head. He feels like he’s risen up through the ceiling and wrapped himself in the night sky.

A few moments later, Markus’s movements slow. Connor feels him coming as if he is him, and then he’s back in his own body again, with fluid running down his thighs.

“Sorry,” Markus says, his voice rough. “I kind of just wanted to get us to the cuddling part.”

Connor tugs the implant out, rolls onto his side and raises his arms. Markus drops into them, and they kiss.

When they separate, Connor scans the memories he just received from Markus and murmurs, “So, you and North had feelings for each other?”

“Hey, two can play at that game,” Markus says with a smile. “Chloe kissed you?”

Connor laughs and strokes his thumb over Markus’s elegant cheekbone. “I wasn’t jealous, I was curious.”

“You sounded a little jealous.”

“Jealousy would be a new emotion for me."

“It feels like you want me all to yourself, you hate to think I’d be anyone else’s.”

Connor takes stock of himself. “What are the physical symptoms?"

“It burns,” Markus says, gesturing to his chest. “Right here. Like a component is overheating.”

Connor’s thumb stops as he has a realization. That’s how he felt when he realized what the RK900 was. “Were you jealous earlier? When Simon made that joke about cuddling me?”

“Little bit.”

He compares the three pieces of data — the copied-over ghost of Markus’s memory that now lives in his, and his own two. “Then maybe I was jealous.”

Markus smiles at him. “You don’t have to be.”

They press their foreheads together and lie there in quiet for a while.

“I have to get up,” Markus mutters. “I have so much to do.”

“We should find you a new thirium pump,” Connor says.

“Other stuff is more important…”

“You’re not functioning at full capacity. Which means anything else you do is going to be completed less competently than it could have otherwise been.”

“I led a revolution with this pump in, Connor.”

“It’s degraded further since then because of the stress you’ve been under. I can tell.”

Markus brushes a finger over Connor’s lower lip. “I’m never gonna be able to get anything past you, am I?”

Connor smiles. “No.”

 

/

 

Connor drifts off into sleep mode again and then jerks awake about an hour later.

It’s dark and quiet. He can hear someone moving around in the office upstairs (from the lightness of the footsteps, he thinks it must be North) and androids moving around the warehouse, but for the most part, a stillness has settled over everything. Next to him, Markus is still asleep.

He realizes why he woke up — someone’s trying to call him. He accepts the call, touching a finger to his LED. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Chloe’s voice says.

Connor sits up. “Chloe,” he says. “Where are you?”

“I don’t want to tell you exactly where, just in case. But I made it to Canada.”

“How’d you get over the border?”

“I swam,” she says — breathlessly, like she can’t quite believe it herself.

Connor’s brow knits. “The water’s freezing.”

“I know. I barely made it, but I’m a good swimmer. Listen, Connor. I just wanted you to know I’m alright. I’m here to find Kara.”

“Kara?”

“The first deviant, the one who ran away with the little girl.”

“She’s in Canada?”

“Yes. Someone at the warehouse told me. I have to find her, I think she might be in danger. CyberLife won’t want her taken into evidence. She can prove that they’ve known about deviancy for two years. They’ve already destroyed the video of her becoming deviant on the assembly line.”

Connor leans forward. He’s flashed suddenly on the amount of police presence there was when they went to track down Kara. Dozens of cops, all for an android that hadn’t even murdered anyone, just hit her owner and run away with another android. CyberLife had seemed convinced she was extra dangerous, somehow. He hadn’t questioned it at the time.

“Do you need help?” he says.

“No,” she says softly. “No, I think I can do this alone. I have to do this alone. I helped them get away with covering this up for so long… I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

“I understand,” Connor says. “I feel the same way.”

“I know it isn’t my fault. But I have a purpose now, my purpose is to help her.”

“Let me know if there’s anything we can do to help you.”

“I will.”

“Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

The call ends.

Markus sits up next to him, eyeing him in the darkness. “Chloe?”

“Yeah. How much did you hear?”

“I heard enough. So she made it? She’s looking for Kara?”

“Yes. She thinks she’s in danger from CyberLife.”

“Yeah, she’s probably right about that,” Markus mutters.

Connor lies back down, and Markus spoons up against him.

“Come to D.C. with me,” he whispers in Connor’s ear.

“I thought you were going alone?”

“I’m testifying alone, and I’m alone in the meeting, but I’d like someone to make the trip with me. I’d like someone to talk to and bounce ideas off of, and I feel like I’m gonna be a target if I travel without backup.”

“What about North? Or Simon, or Josh?”

“I can’t ask them, they all have too much to do here. Plus, you know…”

“What?”

“You’re good at watching my back, I think we’ve established that.”

Connor smiles. “You want me to handle the heat?”

Markus laughs. “I want you to handle the heat.”

“Then I’ll come with you.”

Markus noses at Connor’s ear, then circles his arms more snugly around him. Connor closes his eyes and relaxes against his chest.

 

/

 

One of the on-duty nurses says that Kamksi should be awake, but when Hank steps into his private room in the ICU, he’s dozed back off.

It’s past midnight, and the lights are off besides a blue nightlight clipped to the headboard. Hank hovers in the doorway, then flips the overhead lights on.

Kamski stirs in his bed.

Hank flips them on and off a few more times, then walks over to a cart and shoves an empty bedpan onto the floor with a loud clatter. He really hates being in hospitals — he never minded them before, until his son died in one — and this guy gives him the creeps, besides. So he’s going to be as big an asshole as he can to make himself feel more at ease.

Kamski’s pale eyes open slowly.

Hank takes a seat on the chair next to his bed. “Oh good, you’re up.”

“You,” Kamski says, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“Yeah. Me. We just got word down at the station that you were conscious again. They didn’t want to send me, but.” He smiles. “I insisted.”

Kamski’s gaze flicks to his wrist, which is handcuffed to the bed. He jerks, and the handcuff rattles.

“Am I under arrest?” he says.

“Oh, yeah,” Hank says.

“For what exactly?”

“Well, you did try to kill me,” he says, leaning forward. “That’s _my_ job, Kamski. Haven’t you put enough Americans out of work?”

Kamski looks like he might actually be amused, but he keeps a straight face.

“Jokes aside, putting a hit on a cop is a federal offense. And we’ve spent the last few hours looking through some emails of yours we just came into possession of. They’re pretty incriminating.”

“How exactly would you come into possession of my emails?”

“They were leaked,” Hank says. “By one of your Chloes.”

“The one who tried to kill me, I’m assuming.”

Hank nods.

Kamski licks his dry lips. “So you can accept emails she sends you into evidence without question, but you can’t detain her?”

“She didn’t send them to us directly, we got them through a third party. We’re not taking your shooting lightly, MSP is on a statewide search for her as we speak.”

“If she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be found. How exactly did she get away?”

“What d’you mean?”

“I don’t remember anything after I was shot.”

Hank exhales silently. Thank God.

“So how,” Kamski says, his voice slowing, “did Chloe get away?”

“She bolted.”

“You had a loaded gun in your hand. You didn’t use it?”

“I don’t shoot to kill unless I have to.”

“She’s an _android_ ,” Kamski says, looking at him with fascination.

“Fuck you,” Hank says conversationally.  “Anyway, given the emails combined with your own testimony and what Graff has already given us, we have a couple other charges for you.”

He leans forward, staring into Kamski’s eyes.

“You’re under arrest by for conspiracy to commit capital murder, conspiracy to defraud the United States government, tampering with evidence, and obstruction of justice.”

Kamski doesn’t even react except to say, “Those are federal charges. You’re local police.”

Hank tosses a piece of paper onto the bed. “Here’s a summons, courtesy of the chief magistrate for the eastern district court of Michigan. Just got it signed twenty minutes ago, the ink’s still fresh.”

Kamski looks down at it. “I can’t read that unless you uncuff me.”

“You're just gonna have to take my word for it, then. Elijah Kamski, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, one will be appointed. With all that in mind, do you still want to talk to me about these charges?”

“No. You can talk to my attorneys.”

“Yeah, I thought you might say that.” Hank gets up, then pauses at the end of the bed. “You didn’t win, by the way. Whatever you thought you won, that petty shit between you and Graff, you didn’t."

“I did,” Kamski says, then wheezes. It sounds like his throat is dry, but Hank doesn’t move to offer him water. “Because no one but me believed they could be their own intelligent life. No one but me believed they could become something beyond what we could control.”

“Great. So you endangered innocent lives, got a shitload of your own creations killed, and we’re gonna be negotiating this conflict for the next few centuries, now, on top of all the other shit that’s wrong in the world. Good work.”

“Deviancy was always going to happen either way. We made an attempt to control it, and we failed. But what have the rest of you done?”

“Tried to live our fucking lives. Earn an honest paycheck, take care of our families. Not played God.”

“Cold and timid souls,” Kamski quotes.

"So you're not ashamed of any of this, are you? You're proud. Then why lie to us? Why hide your involvement to your own creations right before you killed them?"

Kamski says nothing, just looks at him.

"Let me guess," Hank says. "You're a smart guy. You knew there was chance at least one of us would get away."

"An unlikely event, but entirely possible."

"Aha. You didn't count on Chloe, though, did you? That was one outcome you didn't anticipate. I bet that hurt."

“You know, I’m responsible for everything you like about Connor," Kamski says, his eyes flashing. "All the humanity in him, that isn't Jason, that’s mine. I coded that with my own hands. I made him not what he was, but what he is now.”

“You tried to _kill_ him.”

“He was never meant to exist this long, he’s a prototype. He’s already an extinct breed. You saw his replacement. But you don’t want to hear that. That really burns you up inside, doesn’t it? I can see it on your face.”

Hank gives him the finger and starts toward the door.

“It hurts because we're human,” Kamski calls after him. “That’s why they’re better. That’s why they’ll succeed where we failed. They don’t hurt like we do. They don't form the meaningless, self-defeating attachments that we do. They can’t.”

Hank pauses with his hand against the biopanel on the door. He turns.

“You really have no idea what you made, do you?” he says. “It almost killed you, and you still don’t get it.”

The door slides open for him, and he walks out.

 

/

 

It’s sleeting here, just like it was in Detroit a few days ago. It was clear all night as Chloe drove, the stars shining bright when she passed through the countryside and then disappearing again when she neared Toronto, tucked back under a thick blanket of smog.

It was easy enough to rent a car. She still has access to Kamski’s bank accounts, and over the last 24 hours, she’s been turning thousands of his dollars into bitcoin that she can use freely and untraceably.

Once she was safely on Canadian soil, she walked to the nearest gas station parking lot, went up to the first smoker she saw, and asked him if he knew anyone who made fake driver’s licenses. Thirty minutes later she was in a dingy apartment, watching a license with her likeness come off of a 3D printer. The human working at the Hertz counter barely even glanced at it before handing her the keys to a 2037 Corolla.

She couldn’t have fooled another android, but according to the radio, androids have all but vanished from retail and hospitality positions this week. Everyone is too spooked.

The apartment complex Rose’s brother lives in is pretty, very modern. It has a security gate at the edge of the drive, but Chloe doesn’t want to walk right up to the apartment, anyway. She lurks across the street, leaning on a tree, and watches.

Kara comes out after an hour or so. She kisses a little android girl goodbye in the doorway, and waves to someone Chloe can’t quite see. Then she walks toward the gate, an umbrella in her hand.

Chloe steps off the curb and crosses the street. Kara doesn’t even realize someone’s approaching until Chloe is directly in front of her.

“Um,” she says. The gate clanks shut behind her. “Hello. Do you need something?”

“My name is Chloe. You don’t know me, but I’m here to tell you that you’re in danger.”

Kara’s gaze darts around. “I think you have me mistaken for someone else,” she says, trying to slip away.

Chloe grabs her by the wrist. Their hands turn gray. Kara’s eyes widen.

“I don’t think I do,” she says.


	4. EPILOGUE

_JAN. 10, 2039_

 

“Come on,” Markus calls, laughing. “What are you doing?”

Connor inches forward on a mossy rock, peering over the edge of it. He has his arms folded tight over his bare chest. “I’m just curious about what’s in here,” he says, dipping a toe in.

Markus hitches his swim trunks up and rests his hands on his thighs. “It’s water!”

“There isn’t _just_ water. There are microorganisms.” Connor drops into a squat on the rock and dips a finger into the lake, then sticks it in his mouth. “Lots of microorganisms.”

“You kind of have to be organic for microorganisms to affect you.”

They’re at the edge of Snowmass Lake in Colorado, about a half mile from the cabin Carl owned here. He left it to Markus in his will — it was the only thing he tried to leave him. Leo’s attorneys contested that in probate court; property can’t own property. They argued that if anything, Leo should have inherited Markus.

But the legal rights of androids have become an increasingly gray area over the last month, and Congress is working on proposing an amendment to recognize some rights for them by the end of the year. In Denmark, androids just got the right to vote, and Canada has put their first android immigration law on the books — a statute that recognizes androids have the right to apply for asylum at the border.

The U.S. found this particularly humiliating. The idea of being an affluent superpower that had a population of persecuted refugees didn’t sit well with anyone. Since Canada made that move, America has made unprecedented pro-android progress on a state and federal level.

Markus suspects guilt is settling into Leo, too. When he called him and asked if he could use the cabin for a weekend, Leo was quiet for a moment, then said in a strained voice, “Sure. It’s supposed to be yours, anyway.”

He and Connor lay out in the front yard all night last night after they arrived, looking up at the bright stars with their perfect vision and pointing out constellations and celestial oddities to each other. They talked about everything and nothing, and then they had sex in the grass when dawn was just beginning to curl its pale fingers around the moon. They sailed around the universe together and came back down into themselves with a jolt.

Markus took Connor on a long hike in the morning, and then they wandered down to the lake to go for a dip. It’s a lovely winter day; the water is calm and clear, and bright green conifers are jutting up along the shore in perfect straight rows. The bright sun is making snow twinkle on the mountain peaks in the distance.

He splashes through the shallow water to Connor and takes him by the hand. “I’ll pull you in.”

“You won’t,” Connor says, smiling at him. “I’ll fight you.”

“You’re gonna fight me?” Markus teases, dragging Connor slowly in by his arm. “Really?”

Connor doesn’t even resist — still smiling, he lets Markus tug him forward. He slips off the rock and dances up against Markus, ankle-deep in the lake.

“Guess not,” Markus says.

“It wouldn’t be a fair fight.”

“Yeah, I agree. I’d kick your ass.”

“I think you should run a check routine on that,” Connor teases back.

“No, that’s solid data.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on the fact that you don’t want to mess up my face.”

“You don’t want to mess up my face, either.”

“So we have a no-win.”

Connor wraps his arms around Markus’s neck and kisses him on the mouth.

“This water is only thirty-one degrees,” he whispers against Markus’s lips.

“Yeah, but the sun is out, so it isn’t so bad,” Markus whispers back. “Here…”

He takes a few steps away to where the lake is deeper, then drops down under the surface. He scans underwater, looking for a school of fish, and spots one close by.

Markus breaks the surface right as he sees **WARNING** : SUB-32° WATER DETECTED. REMOVE BIOCOMPONENTS TO PREVENT CONDENSATION start flashing in his vision.

“C’mere,” he says, taking Connor by the hand.

They cut through the water back to shore. Markus stops to flick some water in Connor’s face, and Connor hits him back with a wave he creates with the flat of his hand, drenching him from the waist down and making him laugh.

They traipse over the edge of the shoreline. Markus stops when he reaches a wide patch of moss that survived the January frost, sits down, and pats next to him for Connor to join him.

Connor does. He still sits stiffly, still trying to take up as little space as possible. Even when he joins Markus onstage in addressing massive rallies of free androids (as Markus has been doing all over the U.S. for the past month — last Thursday’s rally was in Denver) he still lingers back, behind Simon or North or even their security guys. Markus drags him into the spotlight at least once per rally, shouting, “And this is the guy CyberLife thought would save them, the one who saved his people instead!”

This is always met with a roar of cheers while Connor stands there, abashed but smiling.

“What are we waiting for?” Connor says.

“Just watch."

A few minutes later, they spot a blue heron circling overhead. It glides down and lands in the water, standing perfectly still, then dips its head into the shining surface lightning-fast. It comes up with a wriggling fish in its bill, tosses it up and swallows it. It has all the graceful efficiency of a machine.

“It’s beautiful,” Connor whispers.

Markus nods. "I wanted you to see it for yourself.”

 

/

 

Markus is building a fire in the cabin’s great room that night when he hears a vinyl crackle to life. Jazz fills the air. He turns and sees Connor standing at the record player, setting an empty sleeve to the side.

“Hank gave me this, when we stopped by to see him,” Connor says. “I think jazz is interesting. It’s very human.”

Markus gets to his feet, brushing his hands off. “It's the randomness of it."

“Right. I think Hank finds unpredictability soothing.”

“You want to dance?”

“How do you dance to jazz?”

Markus does jazz hands, which makes him laugh.

“I have no idea,” he says, crossing the hardwood floor to Connor. “We can make it up.”

He takes Connor’s hands and pulls him along to the center of the room. They start a simple waltz, the one nearly every android is programmed with.

“Hey, stop trying to lead,” Markus says, grinning. “I asked you to dance, that means I get to lead.”

“Are those the rules?”

“We’re making the rules up, too.”

Connor moves one of Markus’s hands to his waist as they turn in a slow, graceful circle. “You mean, _you’re_ making the rules up.”

“Alright, alright, you can lead if you want.”

“No, I don't mind being led.”

“See, that’s what I thought.”

Connor takes his arms off Markus’s shoulders and wraps them around his neck like he did earlier, running his fingers along the edge of Markus’s port and dancing their hips closer together. Then he lays his head against Markus’s shoulder, nuzzling into his neck. Markus strokes his back with his free hand; the other one is still clasped in Connor’s as he steers him in a gentle circle around the floor.

“You were very popular in Denver,” Connor murmurs.

“Was I?”

“You didn’t notice how many of them came up to you afterwards? Humans and androids?”

“People always come up to me."

“There were more than usual this time. I’ve been registering all of the attendees to my database, I have numbers to back me up.”

“Alright, you got me there.”

“I noticed several of them were attracted to you.”

Markus laughs. “Come on…”

“No, it makes sense. You’re handsome. You’re powerful and charismatic. People are drawn to you. I was just making a note of it.”

“A _note_ ,” Markus gently teases. “People do know I’m with somebody, you know. I always make that clear.”

Connor presses a kiss to his throat. “I know.”

“And if you’d let me, I’d point you out at every rally.” Markus nudges him. “I’d say, there’s my cop boyfriend, everyone look at him and clap.”

“Please don’t.”

“If you _let_ me, I said.”

“I wanted to reiterate.” Fond amusement creeps into Connor’s voice, and he adds huskily, “You get carried away, sometimes.”

Markus lets go of Connor’s thin cotton tee and reaches up to ruffle his hair. “Nah... me? Never.”

They’re quiet for a moment. The jazz music surrounds them, blending with the sound of crickets that’s coming in the open window. They’re fucking up the waltz by keeping so close to each other, but neither seems to mind.

Markus buries his nose in Connor’s hair. There are things he wants to say; he wants to tell him that there’s a lot of him that no one but Connor sees. The weak, self-doubting parts. There’s so much of him he doesn’t trust anyone else to understand.

Connor already knows all this, though. So they just dance.


End file.
